Key Youth Health Problems
Some young people engage in risky behaviours that affect their health and therefore the majority of health problems are psychosocial. Many young people experience multiple problems. These behaviours are established as a young person and go on to become the lifestyles of adults leading to chronic health problems. Social, cultural and environmental factors are all important (Chown et al. 2004). Young people have specific health problems and developmental needs that differ from those of children or adults: The causes of ill-health in adolescents are mostly psychosocial rather biological. Young people often engage in health risk behaviours that reflect the processes of adolescent development: experimentation and exploration, including using drugs and alcohol, sexual behaviour, and other risk taking that affect their physical and mental health (AIHW, 2007). The leading health related problems in the age group 12 – 24 years are (AIHW, 2007):
- Accidents and injuries both unintentional and self-injury
- Mental health problems including depression and suicide
- Behavioural problems including substance abuse
- Sexual health / Infectious diseases
- Nutrition and physical activity
- Chronic illness
- Physical and Sexual Assault
- Youth homelessness
Young people often lack awareness of the harm associated with risk behaviours, and the skills to protect themselves as well as the lack knowledge about how and where to seek help for their health concerns (Chown et al., 2004). By intervening at this early life stage, many chronic conditions later in life can be prevented. Factors Influencing Health and Wellbeing according to the Australian National Youth Information Framework (AIHW, 2007) include:
- Environmental factors
- Socio-economic factors
- Community capacity
- Health behaviours
- Person related factors
Read more about this topic: Youth Health
Famous quotes containing the words health problems, key, youth, health and/or problems:
“It is not stressful circumstances, as such, that do harm to children. Rather, it is the quality of their interpersonal relationships and their transactions with the wider social and material environment that lead to behavioral, emotional, and physical health problems. If stress matters, it is in terms of how it influences the relationships that are important to the child.”
—Felton Earls (20th century)
“The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is—Imbecility: imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments: victims of gravity, customs and fear. This gives force to the strong,—that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When he became all eye when one was present, and all memory when one was gone; when the youth becomes the watcher of windows, and studious of a glove, a veil, a ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage, when no place is too solitary, and none too silent.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A major difference between witches and psychotherapists is that witches see the mental health of women as having important political consequences.”
—Naomi R. Goldenberg (b. 1947)
“I am always glad to think that my education was, for the most part, informal, and had not the slightest reference to a future business career. It left me free and untrammeled to approach my business problems without the limiting influence of specific training.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)