|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Keith Mulvihill
NEW YORK, Mar 22 (Reuters Health) - What drives a teenager to pick up a weapon and kill another? Although the final motivation remains a mystery, a Minnesota researcher who is interviewing jailed teens concludes that society could be doing more to prevent such murders.
It appears that the warning signs and signals--as well as opportunities to intervene--are often evident years before a violent act, but not much is done to help violence-prone adolescents, the findings suggest.
Dr. Margaret Dexheimer Pharris of the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, found that teens who commit murder are themselves often the victims of violence or get into trouble with the law long before the murderous act. As a result, these teens are very likely come into contact with healthcare professionals or youth counselors who have an opportunity to reach out and offer help, she said.
Pharris is presenting her findings at the annual meeting of the Society for Adolescent Medicine being held this week in San Diego, California.
Pharris interviewed 12 male teenagers between 1996 and 1997 who were serving prison time for murder. Of the 12 teens she interviewed, 83% had been to an emergency department at least once. Five had been physically assaulted, three had been shot, and three visits were for an injury from some type of accident.
In addition, all 12 of the teens had been to a juvenile detention center and roughly one third of the group had been to a sexually transmitted disease clinic.
All of the teens who went to the emergency department, for instance, reported that they were never offered any type of counseling or help after the event, Pharris noted.
"One 14-year-old told me he was discharged from the emergency room to himself after a bicycle crash while he was drunk," Pharris told Reuters Health in an interview.
"We need to pay more attention to adolescents, especially when they start showing signs of depression, or get into trouble with the law. These signs need to be taken seriously," she said.
Pharris, who is a professor in nursing, said she and others in her community were "wondering what possible explanations there could be" for the increase in murders committed by adolescents.
"There is very little qualitative data on the lives of these teens and not much can be gleaned from police or pre-sentencing files," Pharris stated.
The teens were between the ages of 15 and 18 at the time of the interviews and were between the ages of 14 and 16 when they committed the murder. All of the study participants were tried as adults for the crime they had committed and they were not undergoing an appeal.
"I spent many hours with each teen and we would focus on meaningful life experiences as well as influential people in their lives," Pharris said. She compared the information and looked for common threads in the 12 subjects' stories.
"Common emotional experiences among the 12 teens included experiencing aloneness, abuse and separation from their family. The teens also reported that they felt more isolated after a critical event in their childhood and they were not able to access the support of a caring adult," Pharris added.
| Health Topics | Drug Information | Dictionaries | Directories | Other Resources |
|
U.S. National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894
Copyright and Privacy Policy, We welcome your comments. Last updated: 23 March 2001 |