Our violent adolescents

Article Outline

• Copyright

Violent injuries are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in adolescents. Many studies have looked at children seen in emergency departments (EDs) because of violence. An intriguing variation in such studies appears in this issue of The Journal.

Cunningham et al hypothesized that any adolescents being seen in an ED were at risk for violent injury at some point, and that identifying them might permit the use of some preventive intervention. They therefore surveyed a consecutive sample of teenagers being seen in an urban ED for a variety of reasons. Strikingly, over three-quarters of these children reported perpetrating violence (fighting, causing an injury, etc) in the preceding year. In one third of these children, the violence met the authors’ criteria for “severe.” This history of violent behavior was independent of the reason for the current ED visit.

These workers dramatically demonstrate that the population of adolescents using an urban ED are a prime target for interventions designed at preventing violence. Now, if we could only develop such an intervention!