Peer Victimization in Pre-teen Years Carries Over into Adolescence

Obese adolescents who are victimized by their peers suffer increased depression and negative feelings about their bodies. Victimized girls gained more weight as they got older, while the opposite was true for boys.

Dr. Ryan Adams of the University of Cincinnati and Dr. William Bukowski of Concordia University studied the effect of victimization on obese teenagers. Victimization comes from the peer group in general, whereas bullying tends to be one-on-one. Professors Adams and Bukowski used data on 1,287 teenagers at different points in their teen years.

The obese victimized girls suffered from lowered self-esteem and depression, and tended to increase their BMIs as they grew older. The obese victimized males also suffered depression but they tended to decrease their BMIs as they grew older.

This study appears in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Teen Suicides Decline, but Rate Remains High

About forty American teens end their lives every week, according to a study from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio.

The suicide rate for individuals between the ages 10 to 19 years declined steadily between 1996 and 2005, when it suddenly spiked by 18 percent. The actual number of suicides declined from 1,983 in 2004 to 1,883 in 2005, but if the downward trend continued the 2005 total would have been just under 1,300.

Psychiatrists including Dr. David Fassler of the University of Vermont believe that the suicide rate correlates with teenagers' using fewer anti-depressant drugs.

The Nationwide study found no differences in suicide rates between boys and girls, or younger and older teens. All were equally at risk.

Female Alcoholics Less Likely to Have Children

A study of female alcoholics found that more women are developing the disorder, which may affect a woman's chances of motherhood.

Researchers at Washington University looked at Australian female twins born before and after 1964. In the group born before 1964, only 4 percent were alcoholics - in the post-1964 group, the rate rose to 15 percent. In the older group, 64 percent of alcoholic women had children, compared to 78 percent of the non-alcoholics. In the after-1964 group, only 38 percent of the alcoholics were mothers, compared to 49 percent of the non-alcoholics.

"This study was about women with persistent drinking problems," said Professor Nick Martin, chief author. "The observation is that they will have less reproduction and delayed reproduction."

The study appears in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Cultural Attitudes Affect Academic Achievement of Obese Girls

Attending a good school and working to maximize one's potential are important factors in a high school student's pursuit of academic success - but for marginalized individuals such as teenagers who are severely overweight, the support they get (or don't get) from their peers has a significant impact on their classroom performance.

Robert Crosnoe, a social psychologist with the University of Texas, has determined that overweight students are at a distinct disadvantage in cultures where excess weight is seen as a handicap.

"You can have the best curriculum and funding in the world, and if there's something messed up in the culture, then you set out to fail,” Crosnoe told New Jersey newspaper The Star-Ledger. "And anytime you put 1,000 kids together, you're creating a culture.”

In her Sept. 2, 2008, article, Star-Ledger staff writer Peggy O'Crowley reported that overweight girls appear to be particularly affected by discriminatory attitudes:

A review of more than 8,000 teenagers from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that obese girls were less likely to attend college than thin girls. That's reflective of a culture that rejects obesity in general.

But individual school cultures played a critical role: In a school where obesity is uncommon, 61 percent of obese girls didn't continue in school. In a school where at least one-third of students were obese, only 17 percent did not go on.

How kids react also differs by gender. Girls are much more likely to compare themselves to the people around them, such as other female classmates, to determine if they measure up. Boys rate themselves by overall rank in society instead of how they stack up with parents or best friends, Crosnoe said.

"Many of the kids said it's hard to sit and do your homework when you're worried about what will happen in school the next day,” Crosnoe told O'Crowley.

Formula for Academic Success: Plenty of Sleep and Healthy Foods

If you want your children to do well in school, make sure they eat healthy foods and get enough sleep, according to studies from the University of Bristol and University of Flinders.

A study of 14,000 British children found a link between eating junk food and doing poorly in school. Researchers considered factors such as low income or poor housing in their analysis.

Dr. Pauline Emmett, of the Department of Nutrition at the University of Bristol, used statistics from the Children of the 90s study. The children in the study were ages 6 to 10 years old. She found that the children who ate sweets, fried foods, and other junk foods were 10 percent more likely to be failing in school, calling this "a robust association."

"It indicates that early eating patterns have effects that persist over time," she said.

The second study found that if teenagers get eight or more hours of sleep a night, they perform better academically. Australian high school students in the study who slept at least eight hours a night were able to perform 80 percent of memory tasks involving dictation and mathematics. Those who got less sleep only completed 66 percent.

"It's almost as if kids without enough sleep do not have enough memory capacity to store that much information," said Michael Gradisar of the University of Flinders Child and Adolescent Sleep Clinic in South Australia.

Girls in Detention Facilities Suffer Higher Rates of Depression, Other Mental Disorders

European researchers have discovered significantly higher-than-average rates of depression and other mental health disorders among adolescent girls who are incarcerated in juvenile detention centers.

Personnel from Oxford University in the United Kingdom and Sweden's Karolinska Institutet analyzed data that had been collected during 25 separate studies involving 16,750 teens and adolescents who were confined in detention facilities around the world.

According to a Sept. 3, 2008 article on the PhysOrg website, both boys and girls who were locked up were found to be at greater risk for mental problems:

By putting all this data together, we can say with some confidence that the adequate provision of psychiatric care for adolescents in detention should be a key priority for prison services worldwide,' says Dr Seena Fazel of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford.

For the first time, the researchers have shown adolescent girls in detention are at particular risk of depression. 29% of girls aged 10-19 were diagnosed with major depression, considerably higher than the 12% of adult women in prison reported to suffer from depression and four to five times higher than in the general youth population. 10.6% of boys suffer from major depression.

Cases of psychosis in boys and girls - severe mental illness involving loss of connection with reality - are also much more common in young offender institutions than would be expected, with rates around ten times higher than in the general population.

Dr. Seena Fazel, one of the leaders of the Oxford/Karolinska study, said in a release that the team's findings indicate changes are needed in the manner in which young detainees are screened and evaluated.

"As well as assessing suicide risk and substance abuse, prisons should consider specific screening for mood disorders especially in girls," Fazel said. "Justice systems for juveniles offer the opportunity to pick up mental disorders and make a significant impact on public health. This is a chance to catch many vulnerable people who otherwise fall through the cracks."

The study was published in the September 2008 edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

U.S. Girls Report 'Pervasive' Levels of Harassment, Abuse

A survey by researchers with the University of Kentucky and University of California at Santa Cruz has revealed that as many as 90 percent of girls between the ages of 12 and 18 have been subjected to sexual harassment or abuse.

Six hundred girls were interviewed by UCSC psychology professor Campbell Leaper and Christia Sears Brown, an assistant professor of psychology at UK. According to a May 19, 2008 article on the University of California's Science Today website, the researchers concluded that sexist incidents remain both prevalent and varied:

"Sexism remains pervasive in the lives of adolescent girls," said Leaper. "Most girls have experienced all three types of sexism - sexual harassment, sexist comments about their academic abilities, and sexist comments about their athletic abilities."

Sexual harassment included receiving inappropriate and unwanted romantic attention, hearing demeaning gender-related comments, being teased about their appearance, receiving unwanted physical contact, and being teased, bullied, or threatened with harm by a male. "Our findings on sexual harassment are, sadly, consistent with previous research," said Leaper. "But on the other hand, most girls said they'd experienced sexual harassment at least once, as opposed to several times."

Girls also commonly reported having received discouraging comments about their abilities because of their gender. In particular, 76 percent of girls said they had received discouraging comments about their abilities in sports, and 52 percent said they'd received discouraging comments related to their abilities in science, math, or computers - three areas Leaper focused on because of the persistent gender gap in academics.

The UC article ended with a call for increased awareness of the pressures and abuses that girls continue to contend with in the United States. "If anything, sexism is probably occurring more than the girls in this study are saying it is," Leaper said. "Our research suggests that parents, teachers, and the media can help girls to learn about discrimination and recognize when it occurs."

More Children Willing to Report Abuse

An article in the Aug. 28, 2008, edition of Wilmington, North Carolina's, StarNewsOnline website indicates that a recent rise in sexual abuse cases in the area is not evidence of increased illegal activity, but rather a growing willingness among children to report their victimization to the proper authorities.

According to staff writer David Reynolds, experts advise parents that communicating with children can be the key component of stopping abusive situations and ensuring that the children get the help they need:

"Unfortunately, I believe this type of behavior is part of our society," said Detective Sgt. Scott Lawson of the Pender County Sheriff's Office Special Victims Unit.

But as people become more willing to discuss sexual abuse, kids are gaining the courage they need to report it, Lawson said. "They are not considering it such a taboo topic. They're realizing, 'I don't have to take this anymore.'" ...

Lawson said it's important for parents to be open with their kids to reduce the risk children will be abused. And talking to kids is the first step to stopping abuse that already has happened, Lawson said. If they have no one to tell, it may never stop.

"The kids I talk to have said something to their parents," he said. "I've never had a kid in here whose parents didn't know anything."

Michelle Hughes, vice president of programs for the nonprofit organization Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina, told Reynolds that the prevalence of child abuse in the United States may approach 25 percent for girls and just over 16 percent for boys - a rate that is maintained in part by abusers' abilities to silence their victims.

"A lot of children will never tell anyone what's happened to them," Hughes said. "They're scared, they're embarrassed."

Girls Get Nose Jobs, Breast Enhancements in Attempt to End Bullying

A British surgeon's admission that he has performed plastic surgery on patients as young as 14 to help them avoid being bullied has ignited a debate over both the appropriateness of altering the appearances of adolescents for non-medical purposes and the implication that victims are somehow at fault for the torment that is directed at them.

Paul Sims summed up the story in an Aug. 29 article on the Daily Mail website:

[Douglas] McGeorge, who specializes in plastic and reconstructive surgery, claimed the bullying is so bad that some children and their parents felt there was no alternative.

He denied it had anything to do with teenagers wanting to look like their idols. "Children are very cruel and there's a lot of stigma attached to appearance," said McGeorge, president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons.

But anti-bullying charities last night said it is the bullies who need to change, not their victims ... Liz Carnell, director of the charity Bullying UK, said, "I don't think bullying victims should be changing their appearance or anything about themselves to please the bullies. It is the bullies that have got the problem, not the victims."

McGeorge said that the surgeries he has performed on young patients include giving a nose job to a 14-year-old girl and inserting expandable breast implants in teen girls "who were not developing at the same rate as their peers."

Sarah Dyer, spokesperson for the charity Beatbullying, told the Evening Standard that the group was staunchly opposed to medical procedures akin to those McGeorge revealed.

"We don't condone the fact that a young person has resorted to having surgery to change something that is unacceptable as far as her peers are concerned," Dyer told Standard writer Sophie Goodchild. "We believe the only way to deal with incidents like this is through proper preventative work in schools, especially with the new term beginning."

Experts Claim Elite Sports Put Girls' Health at Risk

Motivated by dreams of college scholarships, professional contracts, and Olympic gold, young girls and boys throughout the world are dedicating themselves to sports training regimens with an ever-increasing ferocity. Though some see these sports-obsessed youth as welcome anomalies in a generation that is often derided for its couch-bound masses, more than a few experts have expressed their concerns over the damage being inflicted in the pursuit of athletic excellence.

In his Aug. 17 Baltimore Sun article, writer Mark Harmon reports that "sports" and "health" are often mutually exclusive terms when it comes to young female competitors:

Twice in the past eight years, the [American Academy of Pediatrics], a national organization of 60,000 children's doctors, has issued policy statements warning that sports training that is too intense and comes too soon in a child's development is a growing health problem. The AAP cites a sobering array of physical and emotional problems linked to overindulgence in sports: eating disorders, burnout, repetitive stress injuries ranging from tendonitis to stress fractures, and, in girls, delayed sexual maturation. ...

In her 1995 book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, author Joan Ryan writes about the culture of excessive, even abusive, training methods that once dominated the elite levels of gymnastics. Ms. Ryan tells of 14-year-old Kristie Phillips, destined to be the next Mary Lou Retton, practicing with a broken wrist while gulping 12 Advils and six prescription anti-inflammatory pills each day. Betty Okino, then 17, competed for the U.S. women's gymnastics team in the 1992 Olympics with stress fractures in her back and elbow, and a tendon in her shin held in place with a screw.

Things were better for this year's U.S. team, but it hardly was a healthy bunch. Samantha Peszek, 18, turned her ankle badly during warm-ups before the first day of competition, knocking her out of all her events except uneven bar. (What's a swollen ankle when there's a medal to be won?) When the competition was over, teammate Chellsie Memmel, 20, revealed that she had competed on a broken ankle.

Actions such as the International Olympic Committee's decision to bar girls from competition in gymnastics until they turn 16 seem to be steps in a healthier direction, but Harmon's quote from the AAP report indicates that he is less than convinced:

"To be competitive at a high level requires training regimens for children that could be considered extreme even for adults," the sports doctors wrote. "The necessary commitment and intensity of training raises concerns about the sensibility and safety of high-level athletics for any young person."

'Lolita Effect' Author Says Media Promote Unhealthy Attitudes toward Youth Sexuality By Hugh C. McBride

A journalism professor at the University of Iowa has condensed 13 years' worth of research into a book decrying what she describes as the profit-fueled sexualization of "tween" girls between the ages of 8 and 12.

In The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It, author M. Gigi Durham argues that popular culture inundates young boys and girls with images and messages designed to promote the concept of the "sexy little girl" and promulgate five core myths about youth and sexuality:

The sexy little girl is part of a culture where major chain stores sell junior panties emblazoned with slogans like "Eye candy" and "Who needs credit cards?"; where toddlers play with dolls wearing fishnets and miniskirts; and where a toy pole-dancing kit is sold complete with a tiny garter and fake money.

Pop culture - and the advertising that surrounds it - teaches young girls and boys about sexuality, but in ways that foreclose healthy, progressive and accurate understandings of sex in favor of market-driven, and ultimately harmful, myths. ...

These myths include the myth of the "perfect" body (slender yet curvy, and preferably Caucasian); the myth that flaunting such a body is the only way to express sexuality or, indeed, femininity; the myth that girls need to please and attract boys, but that their own pleasure is inconsequential; the myth that the younger the girl is, the sexier she is; and the myth that violence is sexy.

"Clearly, the world is not an easy place for our teen and tween girls, and the media play an ever-more-present role in shaping their lives, aspirations, and self-image," Dunham wrote on her blog. "The only way for girls to gain critical distance from these pressures and stressors is to recognize that they are being manipulated by for-profit corporations that aren't interested in helping girls ... In today's media-saturated environment, media literacy is as essential as math and reading skills. Maybe more essential."