Review

Not quite as healthy as they look

HEALTH ISSUES AND ADOLESCENTS: growing up, speaking out
Janet Shucksmith and Leo B Hendry
Routledge, 1998, £12.99

‘Young people in the main, are notoriously and ridiculously healthy’ is a bold way to begin a book aimed at encouraging sensitivity for the health concerns voiced by a sample of young people aged 15 years—especially when the evidence to support this statement is lacking.

I found the structure of this book rather tedious, and some of the arguments contrived and unconvincing. I was not persuaded by the authors’ suggestion that the adult health promotion agenda is as much about social control as health protection.

To accept that the current health agenda for young people is aimed at preventing future morbidity and avoids addressing immediate health concerns, requires that we overlook patterns in accidental injury, trends in suicide and mental health problems, drug-related behaviours, and teenage pregnancies, and all the related health interventions. I am uncomfortable with such a position.

This may be less difficult for the authors who seem dismissive of the role of quantitative research and routine data in affecting public health policy. For example, ‘the low mortality and morbidity in this age group meant that it was largely ignored by epidemiologists and health scientists in favour of [other groups] where there were enough sick or dying people to make it worth counting and watching patterns’ appears on page 1 and similar sentiments emerge periodically.

Health statistics suggest that adolescents have benefited less than other age groups from health promotion strategies and the effective targeting of health messages does require increased understanding of the priorities of young people, which well-designed qualitative approaches can provide— so I was disappointed that the results of rich data derived from fieldwork interviews with the participants in this study, using some innovative methods of data collection, were largely obscured by substantial quotation from the existing literature, and heavy interpretation.

The message I did take away was that (with the exception of accidents, the major cause of morbidity and mortality in populations aged under 30 years, which were not raised at all) the issues concerning this sample of adolescents, were remarkably consistent with public health agenda for young people—the difference being that for the participants in this study, factors such as appearance and relationships were more important than health in defining behaviour.