Boarding Schools for Girls

The British government plans to supply teenage girls with long-acting contraception injections and/or implants without their parents' permission. British girls have the highest rate of unplanned pregnancies in Europe, resulting in almost 40,000 abortions per year.

Teenagers in Great Britain have access to condoms, morning-after pills, and birth control pills in one out of every three high schools. However, an expert from the British National Institute of Health said that the main problem is that girls are getting pregnant after they forget to take their birth control pills as prescribed.

Birth control implants and injections can render a female infertile for as long as three years.

The new measure is controversial because some doctors believe that using such forms of birth control may have a detrimental effect on bone growth in young women.

Labels: teenagers, birth-control

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Research from Kings College in London found that today's British teenagers received fewer top scores in academic tests compared to teens thirty years ago. Average scores from both groups were similar, however.

Only one in twenty of today's teens got a top score in mathematical ability, compared to one in five in 1976. In abstract thinking measures, it was one in ten compared to one in four in 1976.

Professor Michael Slayer, who performed the study, had previously found that eleven-year-olds were three years behind those in 1976 in cognitive abilities.

This study appeared in the British Journal of Educational Psychology.

Labels: british_teens

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Teens who watch the most television programs with sexual content are more likely to get pregnant or to get their girlfriends pregnant, according to a study that appeared in the journal Pediatrics.

Dr. Anita Chandra, a researcher at Rand Corporation, surveyed 2000 children ages 12 to 17 old in 2001, and then contacted these children again in 2002 and 2004. About 14 percent of those in the study became teen parents, and this group watched more shows with sexual content. The researchers took into account factors such as race and parental education.

"These findings add to the growing body of evidence that what children see on screen affects their behaviors in real life," said Dr. Dmitri Christakis, a professor at the University of Washington and an expert on children's television.

Labels: pregnancy

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Depression and anxiety in teenaged girls is linked to low bone density, according to a study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

Dr. Lorah Dorn, an endocrinologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, studied girls ages 11 to 17 years old who had histories of depression or anxiety, and found they had a lowered bone mineral content. Other studies have found this to be true among adult women with depressive and anxiety problems.

Dr. Dorn was unsure why this link exists, but she speculated that high levels of certain stress hormones might affect bone density. Low bone density can have serious complications, including an increased risk for bone fractures.

Labels: depression, anxiety, bone_loss

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Once seen as a problem that was limited to bodybuilders and elite athletes, steroid abuse has invaded America's high schools and middle schools - and muscle-bound football players aren't the only ones who are at risk.

According to a Feb. 19 article by Boston Globe staff writer Stan Grossfeld, teenage girls are also turning to steroids in misguided attempts to improve their appearance:

A recent report by the Oregon Health and Science University using data from the Centers for Disease Control said 5.3 percent of teenage girls admitted to using anabolic steroids, mostly for body-enhancing reasons or self-protection, not athletics.

According to 2003 CDC data, seventh-grade girls were the fastest-growing group of steroid users, with more than 7 percent using them, the controversial report stated.

Steroids can cause liver tumors, increase blood pressure, stunt growth and, in girls, deepen their voices. Nevertheless, one recent study found that 57 percent of high school steroid users said they would risk shortening their life for increased performance.

"They're young and they think they are invincible," says the study's author, Jay Hoffman, chairman of health and science at the College of New Jersey.

Dionne Roberts, who told Grossfeld that she tried steroids to help her get "six-pack abs" shortly after graduating high school in 2003, said that the drugs drove her to the brink of despair. "I just became so totally depressed," she said in the article. "I was definitely suicidal. I just was so upset the smallest thing would set me off."

Synthetic substances that are similar to the hormone testosterone, steroids can inflict a variety of undesirable effects on the bodies of teen girls, including irregular menstruation, excess facial and body hair, and severe acne.

Labels: athletes, steriods, drug

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