Teen fighting down in many nations, but not US: study
these countries." Fighting in the United States ranged from nearly 12 percent of children to close to 10 percent, depending on the year, but there was no obvious decline. "It's reassuring that the rates aren't going up," said Rashmi Shetgiri, a pediatrician and violence prevention researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who was not involved in the study.
"(But) it makes me wonder, have we sort of reached a plateau in terms of the interventions that we're using, and do we need to develop some different types of interventions or use them in a different way to really make those rates start going down again," she said.
Shetgiri said programs to curb bullying and improve social skills have been successful in reducing fighting, but perhaps tailoring them to specific racial and ethnic groups could have an even bigger impact.
Pickett pointed out that the United States, Canada and several other countries did show modest improvements in fighting rates, but the differences were so small that they could have been due to chance.
Greater numbers of children reported fighting in Greece, Latvia and the Ukraine reported fighting during each subsequent survey, and the authored pointed out that these countries experienced considerable economic instability during the study time period.
In addition, they found that children from low income countries were more likely to fight than kids from wealthier nations.
"If economic instability is the problem, we should monitor this because of what is going on in the world these days," Pickett said.
Be the first to comment.
