Dennis Barbour examines why adolescents and young men aren't getting the health care they need.
I was a chubby kid. Clothing manufacturers still euphemistically label what had been my size as "husky". I was chubby, that is, until I was nine. That's the year I visited the pediatrician for the last time. After he weighed me and poked and prodded my thicker areas he announced with dripping disdain that at 92 pounds I was ten pounds overweight. He was brutal. He said things to shame me
that to this day make me shiver. But his tactic worked. Within two months I had shed the ten pounds and I've been on a diet ever since.
That experience as a child was transformative because it set the stage for a lifetime habit, if not an obsession, of keeping my weight in check. As I have grown older the logical extension has been
regular cardiovascular exercise, coupled with mild gym rat behavior, which has led to a healthy examination of the foods I eat. The fact is, when it comes to health and behavior, lifestyle patterns are set very early in life. In my case the stage may have been set for a lifetime obsession when it comes to my weight and fitness, but I am thankful that my parents took me to a pediatrician who at least recognized that I was on a trajectory to become an overweight, if not obese, adult, with all of the attendant health consequences.
Today we have an adolescent obesity epidemic in this country, and it isn't just an issue for girls and young women. We have an adolescent suicide problem, and it's pronounced with adolescent males, who complete suicide at four times the rate of adolescent females. Homicide among adolescent males is four times that of adolescent females. Adolescent males have an unintended injury rate that is double that of females, and adolescent males have an ADHD diagnosis rate that is three times that of adolescent females. The diagnosis rate of epilepsy among young males is twice that of young females, and the incidence rates of syphilis among males age 15-24 is from twice to five times that of females.
Yet, like me on that fateful day when I was nine, once most young males leave their pediatrician's office for the last time they do not return to a health care provider for regular visits until their mid-thirties, if then. And, while this lack of continuous care may be exacerbated by poverty and other factors, it affects young men who come from affluent backgrounds as well. It is often observed that men "do not go to the doctor" because of misplaced notions of masculinity or because their female partners (as an extension of their mothers) watch over their health. It is just as likely that men do not go to the doctor regularly because by their thirties a visit to the doctor has become a very foreign encounter, fraught with unpleasant childhood memories....read more........