Assaulted Girls Are More Likely Than Boys To Have Preexisting Cognitive Or Psychosocial Impairments.(Brief Article)

2001 SEP 6 - (NewsRx Network) -- In the U.S., adolescent girls are more likely than adolescent boys to be assaulted at home, at a residence, or at school than in public, and are more likely than boys to be stabbed than shot, study findings show.

Harry Moskowitz, MD, formerly of New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues, reviewed data from two national data bases to determine if there were differences between adolescent boys and girls in the characteristics of those who were injured or died, the severity of their injuries and outcomes, and the type of injury.

Adolescents were defined as individuals ages 12 to 18 years. Violence-related injuries included in the study were those either perpetrated by a stranger or by an intimate partner. The study compared 612 adolescent girls seriously injured because of assault with 2,656 boys seriously injured because of assault from 1989 through 1998, and (from a different database) 3,487 girls who died due to homicide with 17,292 adolescent boys who died due to homicide from 1990 through 1997.

The authors also extracted information from the databases on preexisting medical conditions such as mental retardation, learning disabilities, scene of the injury (home, school, or public place), and preexisting psychosocial problems such as violent or physically aggressive behavior.

Reporting in the August 2001 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, the authors found that girls were more than twice as likely as boys to be stabbed than shot and were also more likely to have preexisting cognitive or psychosocial impairments than boys. Girls were more likely than boys to be injured in a home, other private dwelling, or a school than in a public place (Arch Pediatr ...