Adolescent, young adult deaths outpace infant and child mortality

Due to advances in modern medicine, it is more likely now for a person to die between the ages of 15-24 than in infancy or childhood.

Overall mortality is way down, but death by misadventure and suicide have moved to the forefront as causes of preventable death in the young. According to the BBC, young men are now three to four times likelier than young boys to die:

“Modern life is much more toxic for teenagers and young people,” says Dr Russell Viner of University College London, who led the study. “We’ve had rises in road traffic accidents, rises in violence, rises in suicide which we don’t see in young children.

“The teenage years were the healthiest time of our life. It’s no longer true.”

Data used for the study and published in the medical journal the Lancet was not available from poorer countries, but covered 50 wealthier countries in the West. Dr. Viner said that the trend was seen in both wealthy countries and less industrialized ones:

“It seems that economic development, the move to cities, increasing urbanisation and social dislocation are actually quite toxic for our young people in terms of mortality,” he says.

Dr. Michael Resnick, of the University of Minnesota, co-authored the study. He commented:

“What is clear is that the greatest threats to young peoples’ health, outside of living in extreme poverty and in ‘hot zones’ of infectious disease and war, stem from the behaviours in which young people engage, and the contexts in which they find themselves.”

Dr. Resnick recommends governments focus on “violent neighbourhoods, extreme impoverishment and lack of access to fundamental resources and services, and the hopelessness that comes from utter lack of prospects and opportunity” to push death rates down further.

[BBC]