Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Poll: Kids' Lack of Activity is Top Health Concern

A recent national poll finds that the top health concern of adults across the United States for children is they are "not getting enough exercise."

The annual University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health comes up with a top 10 list of adults' biggest health concerns for kids in their communities.

For the first time, not enough exercise was rated by most adults, 39%, at the top of the list, according to a release from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Thirty-eight percent of those polled listed childhood obesity as the top concern. Smoking and tobacco use was cited by 34% as the biggest concern.

The remaining top concerns are:
 4. Drug abuse (33%)
 5. Bullying (29%)
 6. Stress (27%)
 7. Alcohol abuse (23%)
 8. Teen pregnancy (23%)
 9. Internet safety (22%)
10. Child abuse and neglect (20%)

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-08-22/child-health/57219420/1

Yale Study: Marijuana May Really Be a Gateway Drug

Anti-drug advocates who have admonished for years that marijuana is a "gateway drug" may be on to something, according to a study by Yale University School of Medicine researchers.

The Yale study, which appears online in the Journal of Adolescent Health, showed that alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana were associated with an increased likelihood of prescription drug abuse in men 18 to 25. In women of that age, only marijuana use was linked with a higher likelihood of prescription drug abuse.

For years, researchers have looked at a connection between marijuana and hard drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, said Lynn Fiellin, the study's lead author and an associate professor of medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine. But given the large number of people who abuse prescription drugs -- particularly opioids (or painkillers) such as OxyContin and Percocet -- Fiellin said it seemed worthwhile to examine whether there was a link between marijuana and use of these drugs.

The study found that, among both men and women, those who had used marijuana were 2.5 times more likely than those their age who abstained to later dabble in prescription drugs. Also, young men who drank alcohol or smoked cigarettes were 25 percent more likely to abuse prescription opioids. However, the study didn't show an association between alcohol or cigarette use in young women and later use of prescription drugs.

Fiellin conceded that more research is needed to prove a concrete connection between opioid abuse and marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes. However, Fiellin said, this study is a start. "It's a red flag," she said. "It sort of highlights that there's a potential association that's important here."

Source: Hartford Courant
http://www.courant.com/news/breaking/hc-yale-marijuana-gateway-0822-20120822,0,726579.story

U.S. High Schools Lax in Preventing Dating Abuse

Although dating violence is a recognized problem for U.S. teens, a majority of high school counselors say their school provides no training or guidelines for dealing with abusive romantic relationships, a new study finds.

Prior research has found that between 10 percent and 30 percent of teens have been physically hurt by a boyfriend or girlfriend, according to background information in the study. And dating abuse has been linked to suicidal thoughts, weight gain, sexually transmitted diseases and other physical and mental health problems, the researchers noted.

But preventing dating abuse and assisting victims are not priorities for U.S. high schools, the new study concluded.

"We found that the majority of schools don't have a protocol to deal with incidents of teen dating abuse," said lead researcher Dr. Jagdish Khubchandani, an assistant professor of community health education at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. "This means that most of the school counselors would not know what to do. This is also true for school nurses," he said.

The reasons vary from not considering dating abuse a serious issue to school administrators' reluctance to get involved in romantic relationships, he said. Some also fear parents will object to school interference in a child's personal or sexual life.

The study was published in the journal Pediatrics.

Source: U.S. News and World Report
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/07/09/us-high-schools-lax-in-preventing-dating-abuse-study

Social Networking Increases Risk of Teen Drug Abuse

Time spent social networking increases the risk of teens smoking, drinking and using drugs, according to a national survey of American attitudes on substance abuse.

On a typical day, 70 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 -- 17 million teenagers -- spend from a minute to hours on Facebook, Myspace and other social networking sites, according to The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

But for this same age bracket, social-network-savvy teens are five times more likely to use tobacco; three times more likely to use alcohol; and twice as likely to use marijuana than teens who do not spend any of their day on social networking sites.

"The results are profoundly troubling ... the anything goes, free-for-all world of Internet expression, suggestive television programing and what-the-hell attitudes put teens at sharply increased risk of substance abuse," CASA Founder and Chairman Joseph Califano Jr said in a statement.

According to the survey results on which the findings were based, half of teens who spend any time social networking in a given day have seen pictures of kids "drunk, passed out, or using drugs on these sites."

Teens who had seen such pictures were four times likelier to be able to get marijuana, three times likelier to be able to get prescription drugs without a prescription, and twice as likely to be able to get alcohol in a day at most. Teens who had seen such pictures were also more than twice as likely to think they would try drugs in the future, and much more likely to have friends who used illegal drugs.

"Especially troubling-- and alarming-- are that almost half of the teens who have seen pictures ... first saw such pictures when they were 13 years of age or younger," the report said. "These facts alone should strike Facebook fear into the hearts of parents of young children."

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/24/us-teens-idUSTRE77N69P20110824

1 in 5 Teens Abuse Prescribed Medications

A slight nuance here...as we've likely grown accustomed to hearing statistics about "pharming," teens abusing prescrition medications they've taken from home or purchased from others. In this study, however, researchers looked at how teens are taking controlled medications that have been prescribed for them by their own doctors.

More than one in five teens who get strong painkillers, stimulants or other controlled medications from their doctor take too much of the substances, in some cases deliberately doing so to get high, according to a study.

Taking too high a dose risks dangerous side effects, but as many as 10 percent use them that way intentionally, the study in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine said.

"There has been an increase in the prescribing of controlled substances in the last 15 years, but there has also been an increase in the non-medical use of these substances," said Sean Esteban McCabe from the University of Ann Arbor in Michigan, who worked on the survey.

McCabe and his colleagues used a Web-bsed survey to test teenagers' use of four groups of controlled medications they had received from their doctors, included sleeping pills such as Ambien, antianxiety medications such as Xanac, stimulants like Ritalin and opioid painkillers such as OxyContin.

Overall, 18 percent of nearly 2,600 students from Detroit-area middle and high schools said they had used one such drug to treat a medical condition over the past year.

Painkillers were the most common, followed by stimulants and sleeping pills. Overuse was especially common with sleeping pills, which 42 percent of users took in quantities higher than the prescribed dose and 17 percent used to get high.

Teens who strayed from the doctors' prescriptions were more likely to smoke, binge drink and use illegal drugs than those who followed medical instructions.

They also sold or gave away their medicine more often, with a third saying they'd given or loaned their drugs to others at some point. That was three times as many as teens who didn't misuse their medications.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/02/us-teens-idUSTRE7710BM20110802

Sexual Assault Doesn't Cause Binge Drinking in Girls

Teenage girls who develop post-traumatic stress disorder after being sexually assaulted aren't at increased risk for binge drinking, new research shows.

In the study, researchers analyzed data collected from 1,808 American girls, aged 12 to 17, who took part in a national telephone survey and were interviewed up to three times between 2005 and 2009.

During that time, 270 of the girls (15 percent) reported sexual victimization. These girls reported more post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms than other girls, but did not have more incidences of binge drinking, according to lead author Kate Walsh, a clinical intern at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, and colleagues.

But, the investigators found that binge drinking may increase the risk of sexual victimization among certain teenage girls, according to the study published in the July 19 online edition of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Currently, there is no way to determine who will develop a drinking problem after a traumatic event such as a sexual assault, said Jennifer Livingston, a research scientist at the University of Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions, who was not involved in the study.

"Binge drinking contributes to sexual vulnerability among adolescent girls in two ways: through incapacitation, whereby girls are taken advantage of sexually, and by occurring in illicit settings, such as sneaking out to a party, where girls don't seek help because they are afraid of getting in trouble," Livingston explained.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/childrens-health/articles/2011/07/29/sexual-assault-doesnt-cause-binge-drinking-in-girls-study

Teen Dating Violence is Common

Almost one-fifth of high-school students admit they physically abused someone they were dating, and those same students were likely to have abused other students and their siblings, a new study finds.

The study provides new details about the links between various types of violence, said study lead author Emily F. Rothman, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.

"There's a huge overall connection between perpetration of dating violence and the perpetration of other forms of youth violence," she said. "The majority of students who were being violent with their dating partners were generally violent. They weren't selecting their dating partners specifically for violence."

For the study, published in the December issue of the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, the researchers surveyed 1,398 urban high school students at 22 schools in Boston in 2008 and asked if they had physically hurt a girlfriend or boyfriend, sibling or peer within the previous month.

The authors define physical abuse as "pushing, shoving, slapping, hitting, punching, kicking, or choking." Playful aggression was excluded.

More than forty-one percent said they'd physically hurt another kid on at least one occasion the previous month; 31.2 percent reported that they'd physically abused their siblings, and nearly 19 percent said they'd abused their boyfriend, girlfriend, someone they were dating or someone they were simply having sex with.

Among those admitted to dating violence, 9.9 percent reported kicking, hitting, or choking a partner; 17.6 percent said they had shoved or slapped a partner, and 42.8 percent had cursed at or called him or her "fat," "ugly," "stupid" or a similar insult.

Proportionately more girls than boys (27 percent versus 10 percent) reported they'd abused dating partners.

After adjusting for factors including age and specific schools, the researchers found that abuse of dating partners was strongly linked to abuse of other students, especially among boys.

Source: Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/647017.html

Teen Boys Who Attempt Suicide More Likely to Abuse as Adults

Men who attempted suicide before age 18 are much more likely to abuse their girlfriends or wives, according to a study from the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene.

The U.S. study included 153 males from relatively high-crime neighborhoods who were assessed annually from ages 10 to 32. The men's romantic partners were added to the study when the men were aged 18 to 25. Researchers found that 58 percent of males who tried to kill themselves before age 18 went on to injure a girlfriend or wife, compared with 23 percent of males who didn't attempt suicide when they were youths.

The association between attempted suicide and later aggression toward partners remained even after the researchers controlled for a number of other factors, including aggression, depression, substance abuse and a family history of abuse. The study documented partner abuse through several types of data, including domestic violence arrest records, women's and men's accounts of injuries and live observations of couples.

The findings, published online in the journal Psychological Medicine, offer evidence of the need for intervention programs for suicidal teens, said study co-author David Kerr, an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University (OSU).

"The study began when these men were kids, before anyone knew who was going to be violent," Kerr continued. That is quite different from research that starts with violent men, or women from a domestic violence shelter, and tries to look back in time for explanations."

Source: Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/640054.html

20 Percent of Teen Girls Abused on Dates

A study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health found that one in five high school girls has been abused by a dating partner. Unfortunately, parents are often unaware their daughter is being abused.

More than 80 percent of parents do not even acknowledge teen dating violence as an issue. The majority of parents said they have never discussed dating violence with their child, and only 8 percent know of a student at their child's school who has been physically assaulted by someone they were dating.

Nearly 80 percent of girls who have been physically abused in their intimate relationships continue to date their abuser.

It's not always easy to recognize if a teen is in a violent relationship. Surprisingly, abusers are often charming in public, especially to the girl's parents -- so pay closer attention to how he treats your daughter and less to how polite he may be to you.

Source: Post-Tribune
http://www.post-trib.com/lifestyles/2293450,tween0521.article

Third of Juvenile Sex Offenders Target Other Kids

More than a third of sex crimes against juveniles are committed by juveniles, according to new research commissioned by the Justice Department.

Juveniles are 36% of all sex offenders who victimize children. Seven out of eight are at least 12 years old, and 93% are boys, says the study by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

The report comes as states toughen penalties for adult sex offenders and wrestle with how to handle juveniles.

"They are different from adult sex offenders," says study co-author David Finkelhor. They are more likely than adults to commit sex offenses in groups, and their victims are younger and more likely to be male.

Finkelhor says only about 10% of juvenile offenders have signs of "sexual preoccupation," an indicator of a pedophile. He says teen offenses include date rape. In the case of offenders age 12 or 13, it is often sexual experimentation with younger kids.

Early sex education is key to teaching boundaries and preventing such experimentation, Finkelhor says.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-01-03-kid-sex-offenders_N.htm