Boarding Schools for Girls

The Ohio House of Representatives has passed a law that will require public schools to educate students in grades kindergarten through 12 about dating violence. The law also requires certain school staff members to take training about dating violence by October 2011, and then every five years after that.

The law goes into effect March 29, 2010.

A Feb. 8 article on BucyrusOnline.com that reported on the new law also provided the following information from the U.S. Department of Justice about dating violence and other forms of relationship abuse:

• About one in three high school students have been or will be involved in an abusive relationship.
• Forty percent of teenage girls ages 14 to 17 say they know someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.
• One study found that 38 percent of date rape victims were young women from 14 to 17 years of age.
• In 1995, 7 percent of all murder victims were young women who were killed by their boyfriends.

Labels: relationships, violence, abuse

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For those who care about the safety and well-being of children, adolescents and teenagers, the rise of cyberbullying (online harassment) has been among the more troubling developments of the Internet age.

While acknowledging the dangers associated with this practice, the LA Times editorial board argued in a Jan. 2 article that parents, not schools, bear primary responsibility for curtailing this type of abuse:

We feel for the Beverly Hills eighth-grader who complained that she had been described as "spoiled," a "brat" and a "slut" in a YouTube video posted by a classmate. But sympathetic school officials went too far in suspending the girl who produced the video. Punishing the student for behavior outside the school was illegal, wrote U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, "without any evidence that such speech caused a substantial disruption of the school's activities." &

Public schools rightly prevent students from insulting one another in the classroom, where even verbal disputes can interfere with a lesson, or elsewhere on school grounds, where conflicts can undermine discipline and order. ...Still, educators should recognize the reasonable limits of their authority and confine their discipline to girls and boys who are mean to one another -- or to their principal -- at school.

Labels: cyber-bullying, abuse, harassment

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A survey conducted by Britain's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the University of Bristol has revealed a disturbing prevalence of relationship violence and sexual abuse among British teens.
A Sept. 1 Daily Mail article provided the following details about the study

• The researchers discovered that one in three teen girls had experienced sexual abuse at the hands of their boyfriends.
• Many of the surveyed teens said they had been pressured or forced to kiss or sexually touch their boyfriend, while one in 16 of the 13- to 17-year-olds said they had been raped.
• A quarter of girls interviewed by the charity said they had experienced violence in a relationship.
  
• Having an older boyfriend put girls at a higher risk, with three-quarters of them saying they had been victims of physical or sexual abuse.
• Girls from a family where an adult had been violent towards them were also at greater risk.

The survey results were based upon information gathered from 1,300 teen girls from throughout the nation.

Labels: relationships, violence, abuse, girls

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Girls who have been sexually or physically abused during childhood are twice as likely to develop severe mental problems, according to a study from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College in London. The effect did not hold true for boys.

Dr. Helen Fisher and her colleagues studied two groups of people between the ages of 16 and 64. Women in the study group who had histories of psychosis were more likely to have been abused as children.

Dr. Fisher said she believes that these girls learn to distance themselves from other people and to "internalize" their difficulties. "These findings point to a need for gender-specific interventions for abused children to prevent later mental health and behavioral problems," she said.

The study appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Labels: abuse, mental health

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An annual survey from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that teens are drinking and smoking less but abusing more prescription painkillers, stimulants, and marijuana.

According to the CASA report, smoking and drinking have been on a steady decline since 1997. For example, the percentage of 12th graders drinking decreased from 19% to 11%; among 10th graders, the decline was 43% to 29%.

However, more teenagers are using prescription drugs, especially painkillers OxyContin and Vicodin, and stimulants Ritalin and Adderall. The number of prescriptions written for these drugs has doubled in the past 10 years.

The annual survey, called "Monitoring the Future," was conducted by the University of Michigan, using data on 46,000 students in grades eight to 12.

Labels: abuse, drug_use, prescription_drugs

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