News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Teenagers who own their own cars are more than twice as likely to get into automobile crashes, according to a new study from State Farm Insurance and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

• Researchers studied more than 5,500 teenagers in grades nine through eleven.
• 70 percent of the surveyed teens owned their cars or were the main drivers of their cars.
  
• Among this group, 25 percent had been involved in an automobile crash.
• Among teens who shared a car with someone else in the family, the accident rate was 10 percent.

Dr. Koplin Winston, author of the study, said that teenagers who have to ask for the car keys are more likely to have parents who monitor their driving. Such parents are more likely to ask where their children are going and when they are coming home.

About 5,000 teenagers die in automobile accidents every year, making such crashes the leading cause of death for that age group.

This study appeared in the journal Pediatrics.

Labels: automobile accidents, health risks, death

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments

Only 4% of American and European children will experience the sudden death of a parent. However, that event puts them at a threefold risk for depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS).

Dr. Nadine Melham of the University of Pittsburgh Medical School compared 140 children who had lost a parent to suicide, accident, or sudden natural death to children with two living parents. She found that the children who had lost a parent suddenly were at high risk for depression, and that it did not matter if the death was a suicide. The children fared worse if their caregivers were suffering from depression, PTSS, anxiety, or other psychological disorders.

This study appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Labels: depression, death, post-traumatic-stress

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

A study from Children's Hospital in Philadelphia found that children who live in rural areas are as likely to die by guns as those in big cities. However, gun deaths in rural areas tend to be suicides, and gun deaths in urban areas tend to be homicides.

The rate for both areas was about four deaths per every 100,000 children.

In large cities, the rate of suicide by firearms was less than one per 100,000 children, compared to a 2.75 rate in rural areas. However, the gun-homicide rate in cities was 3.8 per 100,000, compared to 0.8 in rural areas.

Lead researcher Dr. Michael Nance said the results of his study indicate that programs about gun safety and suicide prevention should be adjusted according to regional differences.

The study appeared in the journal Pediatrics.
 

Labels: violence, suicide, death

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 0 Comments

The United States ranks 29th in its childhood mortality rate, according to new data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

• The United States had a 42% decline in childhood mortality in 1990.
• The current rate is 6.7 deaths per 1000 children this year.
• Nations such as Serbia and Malaysia, have shown more dramatic decreases and are now ranked higher than the United States.
• Singapore has the lowest child mortality rate at 2.5 deaths per 1000 children.

The authors of the study blame the United States' poor performance on a fragmented, poorly planned health care system.
 

Labels: health, children, infants, death

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 0 Comments