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Questions:
What are the Teenage Health Freaks about?
Answers: One is the diary of a teenage boy,
Pete Payne, and the other is a diary of his sister Susie.
The books are about teenagers everyday lives, but the boy
is an extremely hypochondriachal boy and is worried about
his health all the time.
Why
did you feel it was necessary to write a book of this kind
aimed specifically for teenagers?
Because there was very little in the way of books for teenagers
that included teenage life. The problem with many books
for teenagers are that they are instructing them, what we
wanted to do is to put teenage life on the map and to give
them information in terms of their everyday life so it applied
to them individually. When we originally did the research
we found out that teenagers were in fact directly interested
in their health but it had to be directly applicable to
them
The
books are updated reissues from books originally published
in the late 1980's. What differences have you noticed from
the research you did then and the research you have done
for the updated versions?
Some of the changes that have occurred have been in everyday
life like the mobile phone, playstations, text messaging
and other things like the London Eye, the Channel Tunnel
and the Internet, AS levels, the fashions, the clothes,
rollerblades instead of BMX bikes. There's also factors
that have changed as far as medical research is concerned,
just take today's news from the Rowntree trust about the
increase in alcohol use amongst young people, we've updated
all the information about teenage drinking habits. Emergency
contraception has really come into focus for teenagers.
Sexually transmitted diseases have changed in importance,
Chlamydia has changed in significance with a slightly lower
profile than HIV.
We've updated the smoking statistics, it does appear that
teenagers are just beginning to take notice of the smoking
figures and concerns about smoking. In spite of all the
information they've been supplied with in the past, they've
taken very little notice of it, but there are some indications
now that they are beginning to be concerned about taking
up smoking, particularly because smoking is so addictive.
There's also a lot more openness now about being gay.
What
for you are the most alarming trends?
One of the things that has concerned us is the chlamydia
infection because as a sexually transmitted disease it does
cause sterility, there does appear to be an ever increasing
problem in that area. I've been involved personally in trying
to prevent young people from smoking and in the past and
nothing we've done in the past has had very much effect,
but there are signs of good sense.
I am concerned about the latest Rowntree report on teenage
drinking, we have a lot in the book about alcohol use and
we do need to take some notice of that.
There
has been a lot in the media about alcohol use in teenagers.
Why do you think this is?
An awful lot of teenage behaviour in experimenting with
life, professionals are very fond in talking about risk
taking amongst teenagers but teenagers don't really risk
take from their point of view, what they do is that there's
this huge menu available to them and they like experimenting
with it. Part of teenage drinking has been due to the fact
that they have been targeted by the drinks companies with
designer drinks and I think they must hold some responsibility.
There is also a general trend for teenagers to try things
at a younger and younger age, statistics show that they're
having sex and experimenting with drugs at a younger age.
There is, I'm sure, a bottom limit to teenage experimentation,
but teenagers like experimenting with life, they feel it's
their right, the way they learn is basically to try things
and see if they like them and reject them if they don't.
What
are some of the most common questions you are asked by teenagers?
The most common questions we get from teenagers are about
sex, 1 in 5 questions is about sex, body image is quite
high, we're asked about pubical changes about whether changes
are normal. One of the very good things about the website
is that boys are asking more questions about their health,
girls are always in advance with knowledge of health, but
we've found that boys do read Diary
Of A Teenage Health Freak because it does apply
to them and they're interested in their own health as long
as it's relative to their thoughts.
You
also have an Internet site, how has that helped you and
your users?
The Internet has been useful to us because we know very
much more about what worries young people because they send
us 1, 000 e-mail's a month, we used to use the agony aunt
columns in magazines but now we're running this website
it gives us a much better impression of what teenagers are
worried about. The site is now getting up to 250, 000 hits
a week and there are a large number of teenagers who are
worried about aspects of their health and who do use the
site. The site is devoted into two half's one of which is
the virtual doctors surgery which which gets used a huge
amount by teenagers in order to get information about their
health.
What
subjects do you think teenagers find most difficult to talk
about?
Teenagers are asking more open questions about sex, I think
relationships, how they should behave, more and more questions
are about teenagers worried about being gay.
How
do you think the National Curriculum deals with issues surrounding
teenage health?
I think the NC is an extremely good at making sure that
the relative subjects are covered but it does depend on
the willingness of teachers to be open to sexual questions,
there still seems to be a slight difficulty there. As far
as mental health is concerned I think we need to be concentrating
on the mental health of young people, if you look at the
research mental health would probably rate as one of the
highest problems in this age group which would have been
unrecognized in the past, things like depression, stress
and anxiety, and we've dealt with all these subjects in
the book.
What
are the differences between talking to boys as opposed to
girls when talking about health and emotional issues?
I think a lot of things are very similar. One of the reasons
we did the first book about a boy is because we know that
girls a lot more interested in reading about boys and boys
are less interested in reading about girls. In the first
book we have Pete going in to read his sisters diary and
e-mail and reading about what she thinks
What
advice would you give to teachers who are confronted with
pupils who are anxious about a health or social issue?
The first thing to say is that it's good that they have
bought the problem to a teacher and they're obviously wanting
help, there should be a school nurse in any school who a
teacher could refer a young person to and they should know
it would be a confidential consultation. I don't think we
can expect teachers to take on all these problems but they
should know where they can send people.
Interview
conducted with Joseph Pike April 2002
Material ©
Jubilee Books 2002.
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