Nearly 20 Percent of Suicidal Youths Have Guns in Their Home
WASHINGTON, DC; May 6, 2013—Nearly one in five children and teens found to be at risk for suicide report that there are guns in their homes, and 15 percent of those at risk for suicide with guns in the home know how to access both the guns and the bullets, according to a study to be presented Monday, May 6, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.
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Teen Girls Who Exercise Are Less Likely to Be Violent
WASHINGTON, DC; May 6, 2013—Regular exercise is touted as an antidote for many ills, including stress, depression and obesity. Physical activity also may help decrease violent behavior among adolescent girls, according to new research to be presented Monday, May 6, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.
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Don't Txt n Drive: Teens Not Getting Msg
WASHINGTON, DC; May 4, 2013—Teens can get hundreds of text messages a day, but one message they aren't getting is that they shouldn't text and drive. Nearly 43 percent of high school students of driving age who were surveyed in 2011 reported texting while driving at least once in the past 30 days, according to a study to be presented Saturday, May 4, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC.
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Teen Moms at Greater Risk for Later Obesity
ANN ARBOR, MI; April 19, 2013—A new study debunks the myth that younger moms are more likely to “bounce back” after having a baby—teenage pregnancy actually makes women more likely to become obese.
Women who give birth as teens are significantly more likely to be overweight or obese later in life than women who were not teen moms, University of Michigan Health System researchers found.
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Iowa State Researchers Find Parent-Child Violence
Leads to Teen Dating Violence
AMES, Iowa; March 25, 2013—Teens today are involved in intimate relationships at a much younger age and often have different definitions of what is acceptable behavior in a relationship. Violence is something that is all too common and according to researchers at Iowa State it is a reflection of the relationships teens have with their parents or their parent’s partner.
“It is true that if you grow up in a violent household you have a higher likelihood of being in a violent relationship,” said Brenda Lohman, lead author and an associate professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State University.
The research focused on psychological violence instead of physical violence. Lohman and her colleagues discovered that psychological violence between a parent and child was more significant than a child witnessing violence between two adults in the home.
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Myths and Facts about Adolescent Suicide
October 24, 2012—According to Maurizio Pompili, Professor of Suicidology at Sapienza University's Medical School in Rome, Italy, the first step in suicide prevention is trustful communication between adults and adolescents. Achieving this requires correcting some of the enduring myths people hold about adolescent suicide.
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What Killed Amanda Todd?
A Look at Cyberbullying and Teen Suicide
The tragic death by suicide of fifteen-year-old Canadian Amanda Todd on October 10, 2012, brought several important issues into the media spotlight. Chief among them were cyberbullying, mental health issues and Internet safety. It also sparked discussions about vigilante vengeance as Anonymous “hacktivists” trained their sights on Amanda’s online tormenter and blackmailer, whose cyber-weapon was a risqué Webcam image of the young girl taken when she was only twelve.
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Who Am I?
The Question of Teen Violence
“In violence we forget who we are,” wrote American novelist and literary critic Mary McCarthy in 1961. Her indictment was aimed at writers who had come to depend heavily on “sensation” and had “lost interest in the social,” but it has become all the more relevant in a world where a focus on the sensational has escaped from fiction to permeate real life.
Sadly, concern about losing oneself in violence has become as relevant to children as it has always been to adults. Almost half a century after McCarthy wrote, there is reason to believe that far too many young people—despite any number of profile pages they may have on such social networking sites as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or Bebo—may not be entirely sure of their identity. How can parents and other key adults instill a positive identity in children to protect them the risk of violent behavior?
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Teen Pregnancy: The Tangled Web
It was the summer of 2008. As school doors across America closed behind hordes of scattering students, the principal of a high school in Gloucester, Massachusetts, made a comment that would launch his community into the media spotlight overnight. The remark (that his school’s recently discovered pregnancy boom was due to a “pact” between seven or eight girls who wanted to have babies and raise them together) was made to a reporter from Time magazine. At the moment he spoke, the principal couldn’t have known how explosive the story would prove to be.
The topic continued to resurface over the next several months as subsequent events reminded the media that teenage pregnancy is not confined to one New England town, or even to three English-speaking countries—America, New Zealand and Britain—widely considered as having the highest teen pregnancy rates among developed nations. But why does any of this matter? What are the issues involved in the tangled tale of teenage pregnancy? (Full story . . . )
