"21 for 21" Tradition Causing Concern about Binge Drinking on College Campuses

An alcohol-fueled ritual in which students celebrate their 21st birthdays by attempting to down 21 drinks is causing concern after a university-sponsored study revealed the prevalence of the practice.

Researchers with the University of Missouri discovered that 80 percent of the 2,518 current and former college students they surveyed said they drank alcohol on the day they celebrated their 21st birthday, which is the first age at which individuals can legally drinking alcohol in the United States.

What has prompted the most concern among health experts and school administrators is that 34 percent of the men who were surveyed and 24 percent of the women admitted to having consumed 21 alcoholic drinks or more on their birthdays as part of a "21 for 21" tradition.

Patricia C. Rutledge, Ph.D., who was the lead author of the study, wrote that the research group's results indicate that celebrating one's 21st birthday with alcohol involves "a pervasive custom in which excessive consumption is the norm."

The study, which is titled "21st Birthday Drinking: Extremely Extreme," also advocates for additional attention and resources in an attempt to curtail this trend of celebratory binge drinking:

One would be hard pressed to point to other situations where such a large percentage of people expose themselves so predictably to such a potentially serious health hazard. It is this combination of prevalence, severity, and predictability that makes the 21st birthday celebration a clear target for public health interventions.

Los Angeles Teen Teaches Sex Education to Peers

Two years after becoming one of Planned Parenthood's youngest peer counselors, a Los Angeles teenager is continuing to educate fellow students about how to avoid unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

Andreina Cordova, a 15-year-old sophomore at L.A.'s King/Drew Magnet High School of Science and Medicine, was profiled in the June 9 edition of The Los Angeles Times for her efforts to raise awareness of the risks associated with unsafe sex.

Cordova told Times reporter Francisco Vara-Orta that a middle-school classmate's pregnancy prompted her to begin educating herself about sex, and that the lessons she learned at Planned Parenthood sparked a desire to spread the word among her peers.

Andreina's work is anchored in Planned Parenthood's Ujima Program, which preaches more abstinence and less sex. At least "until you know what you're getting into and the consequences," Andreina said.

The program was launched in 2002 after research indicated that teens were more likely to feel comfortable discussing sex with peers instead of parents, said Mary-Jane Waglé, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles.

Andreina "understands the experience of teens in her area, she has lived there, and she understands what they are going through," Waglé said. "Her knowing all that firsthand gives her authority to be a leader and get people to listen."

Cordova's efforts are particularly important because she lives in an area that is rife with sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies. The Times reported that Los Angeles County has an annual teen STI rate of more than 350,000, and more than 5,000 girls younger than age 18 gave birth there in 2005.

Girls with ADHD May Develop Eating Disorders or Depression

Girls with attention deficit disorder are at greater risk for eating disorders, depression and anxiety, according to a new study from the University of Virginia.

Psychologist Amori Yee Mikami, lead author, said that girls with ADHD are more likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies and develop bulimia, a disorder characterized by binge eating followed by purging through laxative use or vomiting.

This study appears in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

Causes of Adolescent Eating Disorders Differ Between Boys and Girls

A study in this month's edition of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine has shed new light on the reasons that adolescent boys and girls begin to binge eat or purge.

The study, which analyzed data collected on 6,916 females and 5,618 males during the Nurses' Health Study II, determined that adolescent girls who binged or purged were more likely to attach significance to negative comments about weight by males and peers - and were more strongly influenced by media images of women - than were those who did not engage in these dangerous eating practices.

Among boys, the primary risk factors for binging and purging were negative comments by their fathers and the importance of weight among their peers.

Actually being overweight was not seen as an influence on whether or not the adolescents binged or purged on a regular basis.

Study Debunks Claims of "Gender Gap" in Education

An analysis of 35 years' worth of academic trends and statistics has led researchers to conclude that fears of a "boys crisis" in education are unfounded.

The study, which was released by the American Association of University Women on May 20, 2008, revealed that the educational gains of male and female students are consistent from fourth grade through the end of college.

"A rising tide lifts all boats. When girls perform better in school, we see improvements across gender, race, and income lines," AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman said in a press release on the organization's website.

The study was commissioned to evaluate claims in recent years that educational advances made by girls have resulted in, or been the result of, a diminished academic experience for boys. The AAUW release that accompanied the study report stated that this was not the case.

"Girls' gains have not come at boys' expense. Overall, educational achievement has improved or stayed the same, and more men and women are graduating from college than ever before. Girls have made rapid gains in many areas, but boys are also gaining ground on most indicators of academic achievement."

STD Epidemic Among Teen Girls: One in Four Has an Infection

About one in four teenaged girls - and nearly half of all black girls - has a sexually transmitted disease (STD), according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The government estimates that 3.2 million girls have an STD. Many are unaware of their condition and may be passing their STDs to their partners.

Researchers analyzed data on 838 girls between the ages of 14 and 19 and tested them for human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and herpes. Syphilis, HIV, and gonorrhea were not tested in the study, which means the numbers of infected girls may be even higher than the study suggests. HPV is the most common STD, and can lead to cervical cancer. A new vaccine for HPV is available for females ages 11 to 26 years old, and some school districts are providing it to students.

Fifteen percent of the infected teens in the study had more than one STD. Twenty percent who had only one partner were infected, and among those who had more than one partner, 40 percent had STDs.

Dr. Kevin Fenton of the CDC said that STDs cost the health care system $15 billion a year. About 19 million are infected, and almost half of them are 14 to 25 years old.

"Sexually transmitted infections have been called a hidden epidemic because a lot of these conditions are going to be asymptomatic when they're diagnosed, but they're highly common," said Dr. Emily J. Erbelding, an infectious diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. "[The study] shows that what people have always suspected is true."

Girls with ADHD More Likely to Develop Eating Disorders

A study that was published in the February 2008 edition of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found that adolescent girls with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are more likely to develop eating disorders than girls of the same age who don't have ADHD.

Dr. Amori Yee Mikami, the University of Virginia psychologist who led the study, told Advance magazine that ADHD-afflicted adolescent girls "frequently develop body-image dissatisfaction and may go through repeating cycles of binge eating and purging behaviors that are common in bulimia nervosa."

Because ADHD is diagnosed three times as often in boys as it is in girls, research into the ramifications of the disorder in girls is relatively lacking, experts have noted. Mikami told Advance that this dearth of understanding could be impacting the severity of the problem.

"Our finding suggests that girls may develop a broader range of problems in adolescence than their male counterparts," she said. "They may be at risk for eating problems, which are a female-relevant domain of impairment. We know that eating disorders occur 10 times more often in girls than boys."

The study that Mikami spearheaded involved 228 girls in the San Francisco Bay area. The subjects were between 6 and 12 years old when they were initially assessed, with researchers following up with them five years later.

Frequent Self-cutting Linked to Higher Likelihood of other Unsafe Behaviors

A study of teenagers who engage in the practice of self-cutting indicates that frequent cutters are more likely to engage in unsafe practices that put them at greater risk for contracting HIV.

The study, which was originally reported on the WebMD website, was a follow-up to a 2005 investigation by the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center. Dr. Larry K. Brown, who spearheaded both studies, told WebMD that teens who cut themselves four times or more were much less likely to use condoms and much more likely to share cutting instruments than were teens who cut infrequently or not at all.

"There were very real clinical differences among kids who cut habitually - those who really did it as a habit - and those who had done it in ways that they described as experimental," Brown said.

Among the teens in the study who admitted to sexual activity, only 40 percent of the frequent self-cutters said they consistently used condoms, while 70 percent of the infrequent cutters said they or their partners always used condoms.

Several studies have noted an increase in self-cutting, primarily among teen girls. Jeanne Whitehouse, a staff psychologist at the nonprofit Human Relations Service, told the WickedLocalWellesley news website that the practice has been on the rise for decades. "In the 20 years I've been practicing, there has been an increase [in self-injury cases]," Whitehouse said. "It's a much more common symptom than it was 30 years ago."

Girls More Likely Than Boys to Experience Harassment Online

By Hugh C. McBride

A study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that almost one-third of all teens who regularly use the Internet have experienced some form of online harassment, with older girls having the greatest likelihood of encountering a cyberbully.

The research, the results of which were published June 27, 2007, revealed that 32 percent of the 935 youth ages 12 to 17 who were surveyed reported having had at least one of the following experiences:
• Receiving threatening messages
• Having their private emails or text messages forwarded without consent
• Having an embarrassing picture posted without permission
• Having rumors about them spread online

Cyberbullying and online harassment appear to affect girls the most, with 38 percent of female teens reporting negative experiences, compared with 26 percent of boys. And the problem seems to increase with age: 41 percent of girls ages 15 to 17 reported online abuse.

Having private information made public by someone else was the most common form of online harassment cited by the survey participants, though 13 percent of all the teens (and 19 percent of the older girls) reported receiving a threatening message via an e-mail, a computer-based instant message, or a cell phone text message.

In a focus group conducted in conjunction with the survey, young participants cited intolerance, adolescent cruelty, and the apparent anonymity of the Internet as reasons behind the boom in online harassment.

Among the comments included in the Pew report was one from a16-year-old girl who reported participating in the online abuse of a fellow student. "There's this boy in my anatomy class who everybody hates," she said. "Some girl in my class started this I Hate [the targeted student's name] MySpace thing. So everybody in school goes on it to comment bad things about this boy."

A high school boy told interviewers that "people think they are a million times stronger [online] because they can hide behind their computer monitor."

A report by the National Association of School Psychologists suggests that the prevalence of girls bullying and being bullied online is reflective of trends in their offline behavior.

In the introduction to the association's "Girls Bullying Girls" report, the authors note that "relational aggression [is] ... a type of bullying primarily used by pre-adolescent and adolescent girls to victimize other girls - a covert use of relationships as weapons to inflict emotional pain. Researchers have found that, contrary to popular belief, girls are not less aggressive than boys, they are just more subtle or covert in their use of aggression."