Adolescent medicine is a medical subspecialty that deals primarily with the care and treatment of patients who are in the adolescent stage of development. This period typically starts between the ages of nine to 11 for females and 11 to 14 for males.  Considered as a primary care subspecialty, adolescent medicine integrates various iatrical aspects including dermatology, endocrinology, gynecology, nutrition, psychology and sports medicine. It is likewise an integral component of internal medicine, family practice, pediatrics, and youth health.

Medical practitioners who delve in the practice of adolescent medicine often address issues and disorders with a high prevalence during adolescence. These include the following:

§ Precocious puberty

§ Birth control

§ Substance abuse

§ Acne vulgaris

§ Unintended pregnancy

§ STDs or sexually transmitted diseases

§ Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia

§ Menstrual disorders like amenorrhea, dysfunctional uterine bleeding and dysmenorrhea

§ Mental illnesses, particularly anxiety disorders, personality disorders, bipolar disorder, major depression, suicidal ideation and certain types of schizophrenia

Healthcare providers who deal with adolescents normally take a holistic approach as they try to gather information relevant to the patient’s well-being. The approach closely resembles the biophysical model which is epitomized in the HEADSS assessment. It is a screening acronym for adolescent patients and stands for Home, Education, Activities, Drugs, Sex, and Suicidality.

Aside from a comprehensive medical history, adolescents ought to undergo a thorough physical examination as well as a mental health status exam at least once a year. The physical exam should include sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing, a neurological assessment, and a reproductive system exam. In addition, developmental progression should be documented on an annual basis, and endocrinological tests should be considered especially among patients who fail to develop in a normal manner.

Young women must be properly educated on how to examine their breast for signs of breast cancer, and young men should know how to examine their penis and testicles for STDs and cancer. Laboratory tests, including a CBC to screen for anemia, and a fasting lipid profile or a spot cholesterol check to screen for hyperlipidemia should be undertaken at least once during the adolescent period.

For those who are sexually active, especially patients who are living in areas of high prevalence, screening tests for STDs should be done, including rapid plasma reagin (RPR) or venereal disease research laboratory (VDRL) test for syphilis, screening for HIV, chlamydia and gonorrhea. Females who are sexually active must have a pelvic exam, including a Pap smear to screen for cervical cancer.

In terms of immunizations, the following are deemed imperative: a meningitis vaccination, a tetanus vaccination or booster shot, the Gardasil vaccine against HPV particularly for sexually active young women, and an annual influenza inoculation.

Juvenile delinquency refers to juvenile behavior characterized by antisocial conduct that is beyond parental control and is therefore subject to legal action. However, such behavior or violation of the law is not punishable by death or life imprisonment.

Extensive research and study have been conducted to determine the possible causes as well as risk factors that eventually lead to cases of juvenile delinquency. A risk factor can be defined as scientifically proven reasons that have a strong causal relationship to a certain problem. An in-depth understanding of various factors that result in juvenile delinquency can help parents and society as a whole to come up with solutions to deal with the problem. Some risk factors have been categorized and are listed below:

Individual/Personal Factors — Individual psychological or behavioral risk factors that may increase the likelihood of committing criminal offenses include intelligence, aggression, impulsiveness, anxiety and empathy. Aggressive behavior has also been noted among children with certain neurological and cognitive abnormalities. These may manifest as restlessness, low IQ and verbal ability, poor scholastic performance, constricted problem-solving skills and reasoning abilities, neurophysiological disorders and aberrant functioning of neurotransmitter systems and steroid hormones.

Children with low intelligence are likely to have poor performance in school. This situation may further increase the chances of offending since low educational aspirations and low educational attainment are all risk factors for juvenile delinquency. Moreover, children who perform poorly in school are the ones who are more likely to truant, which is likewise related to offending.

Environmental Factors – The immediate environment where a child grows has a significant role in influencing the child’s behavior patterns. Some environmental factors that have been generally associated with delinquent behavior include poverty or limited economic opportunities, excessive exposure to violence and criminal acts, and high unemployment rate.

Community/Social Factors – Researchers claim that the community has a substantial role to play in child development, including a smooth transition from adolescence to adulthood. A strong social infrastructure help children and teenagers to develop the essential social skills, boost self-confidence and enhance decision-making capabilities. In contrast, a disorganized society is a potential risk factor for juvenile delinquency. Some community level risk factors include lack of quality educational and recreational opportunities, availability and accessibility of illicit drugs and weapons.

Family Factors — It is crucial to establish good communication between parents and children, adequate parental supervision and guidance in order to ensure healthy development of a child. However, there is sufficient evidence which suggests that family environment has direct influence on a child’s state of mind, resulting in juvenile delinquency. These include incidences like domestic violence, child neglect, child abuse, parental conflict or separation, criminal parents or siblings, and ineffective disciplinary practices of parents.

Student voice is the term used to embody and characterize the specific behavior and distinct perspectives of young people across various learning institutions that focus primarily on education.  It empowers students and endows them with the ability to influence learning to integrate contexts policies, principles and programs.

Student voice represents the individual as well as the collective outlook and attitude of young people within the framework of education. It has been regarded in schools as both a figurative practice and as a practical and utilitarian concern.

Student voice work is based on the following principles:

• Young people have distinct viewpoints when it comes to the concept of education which includes schooling, teaching and learning.
• Their perspectives command not only the attention but also the understanding and responses of adults.
• They ought to be given active participation in shaping their education.

A number of typologies characterize the different practices that fall within the context of student voice. One determines and establishes the multiple roles for students in all respects of the education system, such as education planning, research, teaching, analysis, decision-making and advocacy.

Administrative Approaches

The presence of student voice is viewed as crucial to the educational process dating back at least to the time of John Dewey, or even earlier. Dewey is renowned for his publications concerning education and his ideas have been influential to educational reform. It was in 1916 when he started writing extensively about the need of engaging student perspectives and experience in the curriculum of schools. His support for student voice was epitomized by this statement:

“The essence of the demand for freedom is the need of conditions which will enable an individual to make his own special contribution to a group interest, and to partake of its activities in such ways that social guidance shall be a matter of his own mental attitude, and not a mere authoritative dictation of his acts.”

Student voice is currently seeing a resurgence of importance as it has been increasingly identified by a growing body of literature as a significant factor throughout the educational process. Specific areas where advocates are actively pushing for the acknowledgment of student voice include curriculum design and teaching methods, Scholastic leadership and educational reform activities.

Curricular Approaches

There are certain types of activities that can particularly incorporate student voice; such activities include school planning, teaching, research, decision-making, learning and instructional analysis, educational advocacy, and student advisories for school authorities.

Service Learning

The main objective of service learning is to actively engage student voice, which normally aims to relate learning objectives with community service opportunities. Student voice is likewise present in student leadership programs, practical education activities, and other forms of student-centered learning activities.

Students as Education Decision-Makers

The main concept behind engaging students as educational decision-makers is to teach young people to be responsible for their education by methodically engaging them in making the right choices about the education system – from what affects individual students, to what affects the entire student body, and what affects the school system as a whole.

The essential duties of school authorities include school building design, teacher hiring, selecting the appropriate curriculum, calendar year planning, among others. Such duties are currently regarded as avenues for student voice. Today, students are taking part in boards of education at all levels. There are education agencies that accept students as staff in programs where they are allowed to make decisions regarding school assessment, grant making, and other areas. Students also latch on decision-making by constituting and implementing codes of conduct and in personal decision-making, such as deciding whether to attend school, what course to pursue and which classes to choose.

Outcomes

Student voice is now widely regarded as a key to a successful school reform, as researchers, educational institutions, and academic support organizations across the globe increasingly press for the involvement of students in the reform process after recognizing student voice as a crucial element of student engagement.

Criticisms

Critical educators including Henry Giroux, Paulo Freire and Gloria Jean Watkins have expressed concern about the singular idea of a student voice. An expert even wrote about the apparent over-simplification, stating that: “It is not enough to simply listen to student voice. Educators have an ethical imperative to do something with students, and that is why meaningful student involvement is vital to school improvement.”

The timeline of children’s rights in the United Kingdom involves a spate of events dating back to the 15^th century. The various events that transpired to date are regarded as both political and grassroots in nature.

The British government upholds its stance that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) cannot be put into effect legally and is therefore ‘aspirational‘ only, despite the fact that a 2003 European Commission of Human Rights (a.k.a. Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) ruling states that, “The human rights of children and the standards to which all governments must aspire in realising these rights for all children are set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.” Roughly eighteen years following its enactment, the four Children’s Commissioners in the United Kingdom (including those for the three devolved administrations) have concurred in pushing for the adoption of the Convention into local legislation, thereby making children’s rights well recognized and legally binding.

Those lobbying against children’s rights often raise the spectre of rights without responsibilities. The children’s rights movement contends otherwise, asserting that children have rights which adults, states and the government have a responsibility to uphold. In general, a 2008 report enounced that there had been no improvement in children’s rights in the United Kingdom since 2002. With a warning that there is a “widely held fear of children and young people” in the country, the report states: “The incessant portrayal of children as thugs and yobs” not only reinforces the fears of the public but also influences policy and legislation.”

The UNCRC defines children, for the purposes of the Convention, as individuals under the age 18, unless local legislation provides otherwise. In such essence, the timeline includes as children all those below the UK age of majority, which was set at 21 until 1971, when it was lowered to 18. Even though the Crown Dependencies of the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not constitutionally part of the United Kingdom, the British government is liable for their foreign affairs and for that reason, it is equally responsible for their international treaty obligations, so the timeline includes some references to matters in those dependencies.

For a comprehensive listing of the significant eventualities in the United Kingdom as they relate to children’s rights, from pre-16^th century to November of 2008, click on this link.

The fear of youth is called ephebiphobia. Initially referred to as the “fear and loathing of teenagers,” today this social condition is regarded as the “inaccurate, overstated and sensational depiction of young people” in various settings across the globe. There are individuals in society who are hesitant and refuse to go near young people, to the point where they veer away, campaign against, and hard sell against anything that would benefit the youth, with the notion that such actions will keep young people away from them.

The term ephebiphobia came from the Greek word éphēbo, meaning youth and phóbos, meaning fear. The origin of this term is ascribed to an article written by Kirk Astroth, which was later published in Phi Delta Kappan. Other accounts said that the term was coined about 10 years ago to capture the social panic that has stricken media, politicians, and even learning institutions. In general, it was based on negative conventions as well as negative childhood experiences, and has been stereotyped and preserved by the way media portrays today’s youth. Ephebiphobia is currently used by sociologists, social psychologists, government agencies and youth advocacy groups that characterize ephebiphobia as an aberrant and irrational fear of youth or adolescence.

Ephebiphobia actually forms part of a series of age-related fears that include:

• Pediaphobia or the fear of infants and/or young children
• Ephebiphobia or the fear of youth
• Gerontophobia or the fear of elders

There are other similar terms that have been used as synonymous to ephebiphobia. For instance, paedophobia has earned popular acceptance across Europe and has been used to describe the foregoing “fear of youth.” Another term that has been proposed is Hebephobia, from the Greek word hḗbē, meaning “youth or puberty.” Other terms include ageism, which denotes social discrimination based on one’s age; and adultism or the inclination towards adults that is biased against children and the youth.

This phenomenon, along with the fear of crime and street culture, is believed to have existed in Western culture for quite some time. Certain events bolster this claim; ancient Greece and Venice are said to have struggled with public policy due to their fear of youth. Niccolo Machiavelli is believed to have envisaged that a fear of youth is what really kept Florence from maintaining a standing army.

The onset of American Puritanism was viewed as dependent on a fear of youth, who were perceived as epitomizing enlightenment and adventure. As such, young people were then seen as vulnerable to decadent morality. The Industrial Revolution also prompted popular media in North America and Western Europe to perpetuate the fear of children and youth in an attempt to advance the industrialization of schooling, and to eliminate the presence of young people from the workplace at a time their labor was deemed unnecessary as a result of mechanization and the advent of new labor.

Concern for mal de jeunesse was claimed to have stricken post-World War II France when they crafted policies that revealed their fear of youth. At that time, youth policies centered on sending French teenagers to either summer camps or in reformatories, while the rest enjoyed total freedom. Likewise, the United States military recognized the surge in number of young people in the Deep South and viewed it as a threat to national security. Analysts later proposed that the upsurge in the popular culture’s fear of youth may be imputed to certain defense policies that have been devised in response to that threat.

The public fear of youth further intensified in the 1990s due to the increased youth access to guns, the emergence of youth gangs and their eventual links to illegal drug cartels, typecasting of urban youth, political and academic pandering, as well as a series of high-profile school shootings that triggered a media frenzy. Moreover, in an issue of Seattle Weekly, fear of youth was particularly cited as the major factor behind Seattle’s Teen Dance Ordinance that eventually went down the drain. Even the administration of British Prime Minister Tony Blair instituted the Anti-Social Behaviour Order in 1998, which has also been directly associated to ephebiphobia.