Here’s your half, Bill.

Moved by women’s burden Melinda said she was especially moved by the burden that falls on women in the developing world, who are called on to deal not only with the daily struggle of feeding their families but with sickness, death and other emergencies. “I felt like I was seeing too much not to speak out … to give voice to the voiceless,” she said.

She said 60 percent of AIDS sufferers in Africa today are women, a shift in the past decade. The Gates Foundation, which is funding research for an AIDS vaccine, is also working on pills and microbicide gels likely to available sooner that women could take without informing their sex partners so they have the power to prevent AIDS, she said. In a speech Thursday, she said that despite many programs to fight poverty and disease in the developing world, “millions of children still die every year of diseases we can prevent easily and cheaply. And more than 1 billion people live on less than a dollar a day, suffer from chronic hunger, and don’t have enough clean water to cook with or drink.”

“By contrast, each of us in this room had the chance to grow up healthy, get a good education, and live our dreams,” she said. “Bill and I started our foundation because we believe that people living in extreme poverty and dying of preventable diseases deserve the same chance we all had: the chance to make the most of their lives.”

Teen Suicide Rate: Highest Increase In 15 Years

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2007) — Following a decline of more than 28 percent, the suicide rate for 10- to-24-year-olds increased by 8 percent, the largest single-year rise in 15 years, according to a report just released in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

Comments: Sexually active adolescent females in the urban school-based clinics included in this study were at high risk for STDs. Over ten percent of the adolescents tested positive for gonorrhea or chlamydia. Given the magnitude of asymptomatic infections, routine screening for chlamydia and gonorrhea seems prudent for all sexually active adolescents in this setting, consistent with CDC guidelines and recommendations.

Adolescent females at the urban SBCs had a relatively high gonorrhea-chlamydia co infection rate (53%). According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), co infection rates of 10-30% of gonococcal infections are high enough to warrant routine dual therapy without testing for chlamydia in that population. During this study, chlamydia tests were simultaneously performed on all GC cases diagnosed at the SBCs and chlamydia treatment was reserved for those who tested CT positive. However, if tests for CT and GC are not done simultaneously, SBCs should consider the implementation of routine dual therapy for confirmed GC cases.

The relatively high proportion of chlamydia infections among females at the suburban JDC underscores the need for STD screening and treatment among females at high risk in areas outside of Minnesota’s urban centers.

The findings in this study are subject to at least two limitations. First, the majority of the study participants were sexually active adolescent females seeking reproductive health care. The participants may not be representative of all adolescent females. Second, the behavioral risk data were based on self-reports and may be subject to reporting bias.

[1] STD Surveillance, 2000. Division of STD Prevention. National Center for HIV, STD & TB Prevention. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. return to text

[2] STD Surveillance, 2000. Minnesota Department of Health. return to text

Statistics – Adolescent Depression

The statistics on teen depression are sobering. Studies indicate that one in five children have some sort of mental, behavioral, or emotional problem, and that one in ten may have a serious emotional problem. Among adolescents, one in eight may suffer from depression. Of all these children and teens struggling with emotional and behavioral problems, a mere 30% receive any sort of intervention or treatment. The other 70% simply struggle through the pain of mental illness or emotional turmoil, doing their best to make it to adulthood.

The consequences of untreated depression can be increased incidence of depression in adulthood, involvement in the criminal justice system, or in some cases, suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. Even more shocking, it is the sixth leading cause of death among children ages 5-14. The most troubling fact is that these struggling teens often receive no counseling, therapy, or medical intervention, even though the National Institute of Mental Health reports that studies show treatments of depression in children and adolescents can be effective.

Brown University reported in 2002 that many parents simply do not recognize the symptoms of depression in their adolescent children. They found that even parents who have good communication with their children do not necessarily realize it when a child is depressed (The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter, Vol. 18, No 4, April 2002).

Parents should be particularly aware of the risk of depression in children who have had long-term or chronic illnesses, who have been abused or neglected, have experience a recent trauma, or lost a loved one. The National Institute of Mental Health also reports that teenage girls are more likely to develop depression than teenage boys (NIMH, 2000).

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