Citation

Males MA. Lancet 1997; 349(Suppl I): sI13-sI16.

Affiliation

School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine 92616-4960, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

9057773

Abstract

Teenage females suffer much lower rates of suicide, homicide, and accidental death than do adult females or males of all ages.

However, US health policy increasingly embraces the essence of the "teenage alien" and "teenage dementia" hypotheses, addressing adolescents as innately dangerous, separate from adults, and requiring stepped-up behaviour-modifying education and punishment regimens. In tandem, politicisation of US health agencies and institutions over the past two decades has increasingly led officials to emphasise the issues that play well in the popular media and political forums rather than those that most menace the young. For example, health officials in the administration of President William Clinton have never addressed a major policy statement to the deleterious effects of poverty and of adult-inflicted abuses on children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's many surveys of teenage behaviour risks have not publicised the threats posed by family violence, adult drug abuse, or sexual behaviour toward children and youths. Thus, US adolescent females suffer the worst of both worlds--a political/legal system that increasingly restricts their rights with respect to those of adults at the same time as it fails to protect them from adult misbehaviours.

Language: en