Boarding Schools for Girls

Having sex doubles the risk for depression in teenaged girls, according to a study of 14,000 students ages 14 to 17 years old. The same thing did not hold true for sexually active boys.

Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, researchers found that 19 percent of sexually active girls had symptoms of depression, compared to 9 percent of those who remained virgins. The researchers took into consideration other factors - such as family conflicts - that could influence the development of depression.

This study appears in the Journal of Health Economics.

Labels: depression, sex

According to a nationwide study of thousands of 5-year-olds in the United Kingdom, boys are two months behind girls on average in their verbal skills and learning ability by their first day of school.

Teachers and parents have long suspected that a learning gap opens up early on between boys and girls, but this was the first study that properly examined and quantified this phenomenon in very young children.

The finding comes in research from the Millennium Cohort Study, which is tracking the development of 15,000 children born in the first two years of this century.

The study involved assessments conducted in each child’s home by trained interviewers. The assessments were designed to measure key information-processing skills. They showed that girls were roughly two months ahead, on average, on each of the three measures.

A new study from the United Kingdom found that teens are most at risk for car accidents if they have had their licenses for less than thirty weeks, and if there are passengers in the car.

"Young passengers can distract young drivers and encourage them to drive in a risky way," according to the study, which was produced by the Association of British Insurers.

American studies have come to similar conclusions, leading to "graduated teen licensing" laws in many states. These laws restrict the time of day and number of passengers allowed in the cars of newly licensed drivers. The British Association is proposing that drivers under age 20 be allowed only one passenger during their first six months of driving.

Labels: driving, safety

Migraine headaches don't usually rank very high on the list of health concerns that most parents of teens and tweens are on the lookout for in their children. But according to a Sept. 27 article by GateHouse News Service reporter Jessica Young, the problem of migraine headaches among children and teens may be much more prevalent than most people realize:

Dr. Merle Diamond, co-director of the world-renowned Diamond Headache Clinic inpatient unit at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago, said moms and dads frequently write off symptoms as minor sinus pressure because migraines don't seem plausible for the juvenile set.

But according to the clinic, 5 percent of children and adolescents (as opposed to 12 percent of adults) battle chronic headaches and migraines — an incidence rate confirmed by other migraine experts.

"We've seen 2- to 4-year-olds come through with migraines, so it's definitely impacting the young demographic. And it's tough because kids aren't able to articulate what's hurting," said Diamond. ..."It's such a miserable and oftentimes disabling condition to live with."

Dr. David Sperry, a pediatric neurologist and migraine specialist, told Young that as many as one in four of his patients have exhibited symptoms that are consistent with migraines.

"For a long time, those in the medical field and society at large didn't believe kids could possibly be wrestling with migraine headaches," Sperry told Young. "It was kind of 'Oh, please!' with them giving a pat on the head and handing over a Tylenol. And this response prolonged the child's agony."

Treatment options for young migraine sufferers include stress-relief and trigger-identification techniques, preventative medications, and biofeedback, Young wrote, while some extreme cases may mandate hospitalization.

Labels: headaches, health

About 750,000 Americans ages 15 to 19 years old become pregnant every year. Although most experts agree that there is a need to teach teenagers about sex and contraception, how to do that remains controversial. Now two new studies are adding to the controversy.

A study published in the journal Pediatrics found that the majority of sexually active teenage girls had heard of the Emergency Contraception Pill but did not know how to use it.

Emergency Contraception, sometimes known as the "morning after" pill, can prevent conception if taken within five days of unprotected intercourse.

Researchers interviewed African-American girls at a children's hospital in Philadelphia and found that half of them had heard of this pill. However, the majority of the sexually active teens did not understand when to take it.

A second study published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health found that teens do not necessarily believe that abstinence and sexual activity are opposites.

"Kids can believe in abstinence, but also intend to have sex," said N. Tatiana Masters, a doctoral candidate at Washington University and author of the study.

She and her colleagues studied 365 students ages 12 to 15 years old before and after they took part in an intervention designed to reduce risky sexual practices. A year after the program, the percentage of boys who were sexually active increased from 11 percent to 22 percent. Among girls, the increase was from 4 percent to 12 percent. The teens who intended to abstain from sex at the beginning of the study were less likely to engage in it by the end of the study.

However, the story was more complex than that. The ones who felt most strongly about either abstaining or participating in sex were the ones most likely to become sexually active.

Labels: birth-control, school, sex-education