4 Troubled Teens Blog

A very popular TV show may be encouraging children and teenagers to smoke, according to a study in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Dr. Guy Eslick and his colleagues found that long-running prime-time cartoon "The Simpsons" contains a large number of references to smoking, and certain key characters on the program smoke. He also found, however, that most of the references to smoking were negative.

Dr. Eslick went through 18 seasons of the program and found almost 800 references to smoking. "Viewing 'The Simpsons' characters smoking may prompt children to consider smoking at an early age," he concluded.

Teen smoking has been associated with a wide range of health risks and behavioral problems. Studies have shown that teens who smoke are more likely to drink alcohol and abuse other drugs than are non-smoking teens.

Labels: television, teenagers, smoking

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Children who are cigarette smokers in middle school are more likely to engage in troubled behaviors as teens, according to a new study from the Rand Corporation.

Researchers collected saliva samples from 2,000 middle school students to determine which children were smokers. By the time the early smokers were eighteen years old, 58 percent had engaged in two or more problem behaviors, including binge drinking, selling drugs, abusing drugs, and dropping out of school.

Those children who had not tried smoking in middle school were one and a half times more likely to have grade point averages of 3.0 (B) or above and to live in an intact family.

This study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Labels: smoking, smokers, middle_school

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A Canadian study of teenaged smokers found that most were trying to quit, but could not. The average boy who starts smoking at 16 years will smoke for another sixteen years; the average girl, for another twenty.

Researchers at the University of Montreal kept track of 319 teenagers for five years. Seventy percent tried to quit, but only 19 percent managed to remain smoke-free for a year. At the beginning of the study, the teens were 12 to 13 years old, and only occasional smokers. By the end of the study, the majority were smoking on a daily basis.

This study appeared in the American Journal of Public Health.

Learn more: Help for Teens Quitting the Smoking Habit

Labels: teenagers, smoking, smokers

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From 1997 through 2003, the number of teenage smokers in the United States dropped from 36.4 percent to 21.9 percent. But recent data shows that the percentage has remained largely unchanged over the past five years, prompting some to worry that anti-smoking campaigns are beginning to fail.

"[Terry] Pechacek [of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] blamed the trend in part on cuts on anti-smoking campaigns by states that had been funded by a nationwide 1998 settlement of a class-action lawsuit against the tobacco industry....At the same time, cigarette companies have continued to increase their spending on promotional activities...."

This data comes from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is conducted every two years. The YRBS questions students in grades nine through 12 about various risky behaviors including the use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Labels: prevention, teenagers, smoking

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Teens are more likely to smoke if they have been victims of trauma, such as unwanted sexual contact, physical abuse, or interpersonal violence.

Dr. Bernard Fuemmeler, a Duke University professor, looked at the records of more than 15,000 people ages 15 to 22 and found that those who had experienced childhood trauma were more likely to smoke in their early teen years. Witnessing or being a victim of physical assault nearly doubled the chances of a teen starting to smoke in the same year.

This study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

If your child has suffered a traumatic event and hasn't been able to fully recover from it, a high quality, therapeutic boarding school may help. Boarding schools that offer therapy can help teens with a variety of issues while they still earn school credits. Visit BoardingSchoolsInfo.com for a list of therapeutic boarding schools.

Labels: violence, trauma, smoking

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Smoking is linked to hearing loss in teens, according to a new study from Yale University.

Researchers tested 67 smokers ages 13 to 18 years old and found that they had problems in focusing and interpreting sounds and spoken language, especially when there were distractions in the area. Scientists already know that tobacco smoke affects the amount of the brain's "white matter," the region responded for communication.

This study appears in New Scientist Magazine.

Worried that your teen is engaging in smoking and other risky behaviors? Pine Ridge Academy offers adolescent behavior modification programs to help teens break bad habits.

Labels: communication, smoking, focusing

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A study suggests that teens can become dependent on cigarettes within just a few days of trying them, and that even infrequent smoking can lead to nicotine addiction.

About 40% of those in the study who tried cigarettes and began to smoke them every day developed tobacco dependence.

• Researchers studied 1246 sixth graders over a four-year period.
• The average age of experimenting with cigarettes was 12.8 years, and 217 of the students in the study tried smoking.
• One of the most surprising results of the study was how quickly some students began to experience cravings for cigarettes.
• About 10% lost autonomy within two days.

This study appeared in the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Labels: addictions, smoking, cigarettes

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Depressed teenagers who attempt to self-medicate by using cigarettes to fight depression may actually be making their depression worse, according to a new study from the University of Toronto and the University of Montréal in Canada.

• Researchers interviewed 662 high school students from a variety of backgrounds,.
• The researchers divided the students into three groups -- those who never smoke, those who use cigarettes to enhance their mood or physical well-being, and those who do not use cigarettes that way.
• Then the researchers measured the students' levels of depression by asking questions such as "how often do you feel too tired to do things," "how often do you have trouble going to sleep," and so forth.

"Smokers who use cigarettes as mood enhancers have higher risks of elevated depressive symptoms than teenagers who never smoked," said Professor Jennifer O'Loughlin, a co-author of the study and a professor at the University of Montréal. "Our study found that adolescent smokers who reported emotional benefits from smoking are at higher risk of developing depression."

The study appears in the journal Addictive Behaviors.

Labels: depression, tobacco use, smoking

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 1 Comment

According to a Dec. 26 article on the NationalCyberSecurity website, researchers associated with Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) have identified two genetic variants that make teenagers more prone to becoming addicted to tobacco:

Teenagers carrying variants in two gene regions were shown to be three times more likely to become regular smokers in adolescence and twice as likely to be persistent smokers in adulthood, compared to non-carriers, according to a study by scientists at the UK’s only Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) for Mental Health* at the Maudsley Hospital and the School of Public Health, Imperial College, both in London, UK, and the University of Oulu, Finland.

One variant is associated with a person’s risk of starting smoking while the other influences their chances of carrying on with the habit into adulthood.

Writing in the US journal, Biological Psychiatry, the researchers say the findings could help develop genetic testing for those wishing to know their susceptibility to nicotine dependence and tobacco-related disease. It could also pave the way for targeted drugs that influence an individual’s response to nicotine.

In addition to being unhealthy on its own, teen smoking has also been associated with rising rates of other dangerous teen behaviors, including alcohol abuse, drug abuse and unprotected sex.

Labels: tobacco use, smoking

Posted By: Staff Writer 1 Comment