Articles: adolescent.
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Preventive medicine · Oct 2017
Review Meta AnalysisSchool-based physical activity interventions and physical activity enjoyment: A meta-analysis.
The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the effectiveness of school-based physical activity interventions on increasing students' physical activity enjoyment. An internet search with several databases using the keywords "Adolescents", "Children", "Enjoyment", "Physical Activity", and "Schools" was performed yielding over 200 published studies. Studies were eliminated based on the lack of experimental manipulation (i.e., non-intervention studies), no assessment of physical activity enjoyment as an outcome variable, a lack of a control or comparison group, and no reporting of the effect estimate's variability (i.e., standard deviation, standard error, etc.). ⋯ I. [0.21-6.36], p=0.039), indicating the presence of small-study effects. This meta-analysis provides evidence that school-based physical activity interventions can be effective in increasing physical activity enjoyment in children and adolescents. However, the magnitude of the pooled effect was small-to-moderate and there was evidence for publication bias and large between-study heterogeneity.
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Sleep has an important role in maintaining health and wellbeing; this relationship is becoming increasingly recognised for adolescents and young adults. Many physicians will encounter young people who present with complaints or conditions that have some relation to poor sleep. This review article looks at why sleep matters within this population group, how it can impact on longer term health consequences and discusses some tools to help enable the clinician to evaluate and address sleep within clinical practice.
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Adolescence is a unique phase of the human developmental process. In adolescents, psychotropic medications may have different efficacy and tolerance profiles compared to those at other stages of the lifespan. Mood stabilizers are a complex pharmacological category including lithium, some anticonvulsants, and some second generation antipsychotics. Focusing on this class of pharmacological agents, we aim to answer the following questions: in which indications and according to which modalities should mood stabilizers be prescribed during adolescence? ⋯ Epidemiologic data for prescription of mood stabilizers in adolescents only partially concord with recommendations from drug administrations and scientific societies. On the one hand, there is a trend toward preferential prescription of second generation antipsychotics, on the other hand lithium is hardly prescribed to adolescents, less often than anticonvulsants. Thus, without approval from any drug administration, the anticonvulsants are often preferred to lithium (because of lithium's potential risks due to noncompliance or voluntary poisoning) and to second generation antipsychotics (because of their tolerance profile). Nevertheless, for prescribers it is a complex matter to compare side effects: the frequency and intensity of adverse effects is quite variable from one mood stabilizer to another, and such a thing as an expected value is therefore hard to define. Regardless of the medication chosen, compliance and therapeutic alliance are major issues. Compliance is especially low during adolescence (less than 40% according to a study on bipolar disorder). This lack of compliance has multiple determinants: poor acceptance or misunderstanding of the psychiatric disorder, indirect effects of bad relationships with parents and more generally adults, but also reckless behaviour or death wishes. Improving therapeutic alliance appears as a major challenge for health practitioners dealing with youth. One interesting path of research could be the therapeutic education programs using humanistic communication techniques (addressing both adolescents and their parents) which have already produced encouraging results.
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Harm reduction journal · Sep 2017
ReviewA critique of the US Surgeon General's conclusions regarding e-cigarette use among youth and young adults in the United States of America.
In December 2016, the Surgeon General published a report that concluded e-cigarette use among youth and young adults is becoming a major public health concern in the United States of America. ⋯ The U.S. Surgeon General's claim that e-cigarette use among U.S. youth and young adults is an emerging public health concern does not appear to be supported by the best available evidence on the health risks of nicotine use and population survey data on prevalence of frequent e-cigarette use. Nonetheless, patterns of e-cigarettes use in youth must be constantly monitored for early detection of significant changes. The next US Surgeon General should consider the possibility that future generations of young Americans will be less likely to start smoking tobacco because of, not in spite of, the availability of e-cigarettes.
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Unintended repeat conceptions can result in emotional, psychological and educational harm to young women, often with enduring implications for their life chances. This study aimed to identify which young women are at the greatest risk of repeat unintended pregnancies; which interventions are effective and cost-effective; and what are the barriers to and facilitators for the uptake of these interventions. ⋯ Little or no evidence for the effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of any of the interventions to reduce repeat pregnancy in young women was found. Qualitative and realist evidence helped to explain gaps in intervention design that should be addressed. More theory-based, rigorously evaluated programmes need to be developed to reduce unintended repeat pregnancy in young women.