Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/young-adults/)
Almost 22,000 10- through 24-year-olds died of accidental drug overdoses in the United States between 2015 and 2019, according to a new study also finding that males accounted for 71.9% of those deaths and females for 28.1%. Of those 21,689 young people, 3,296 were aged 10 through 19.
While jailed on drug charges at New York City’s Rikers Island in 1994, Marilyn Reyes received medical treatment to curb her heroin addiction. But once Reyes, then in her 20s, was convicted and transferred to an upstate prison, she stopped getting the medications prescribed to help her overcome what's since been labeled as opioid use disorder. “It was the most traumatizing, horrible experience I ever had,” said Reyes, now co-director of Peer Network of New York, which provides, among other services, needle exchanges to reduce some of the health hazards of using illegal drugs.
States must begin piecing together a strategy to reduce recidivism and improve other outcomes for young adults using a few broad approaches, says a new report from the Justice Center at the Council of State Governments.
For three days next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that will determine the fate of the health care reform law signed by President Obama two years ago. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act introduced a number of changes to how the health insurance industry operates and would cover more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Immediate changes include allowing adult children to remain on their parents’ insurance until they turn 27 as well as the elimination of yearly and lifetime coverage caps. More changes will be rolled out slowly until 2014, when the full law takes effect. But opponents argue one provision in particular is unconstitutional — the so-called individual mandate that takes effect in 2014 and requires most Americans to purchase health insurance or else face heavy fines.
At the National Collegiate Recovery Conference Wednesday at Kennesaw State University, Michael Fishman, Director of the Young Adult Program at Talbott Recovery Campus in Atlanta, neatly summed up everything he had learned in 22 years of treating addiction in young adults. The recurring theme of his keynote address: It’s complicated. “Most young adults are generally poly-substance abusers,” he said. They aren’t just using marijuana; they’re also drinking, Fishman says. It’s not just opioids, it’s opioids and anti-depressants or any other combination.
In recent years, more young adults are choosing the lower prices and sweeter flavors of cigars and the longer, slimmer cigarillos over cigarettes. Troubled by this trend, health experts are releasing a seven-year study in the October issue of the American Journal of Public Health that addresses which specific young adult populations are using them and which brands are their favorites. According to a press release, 19- to 26-year-olds who are black, non-Hispanics, who engage in risky behaviors and smoke cigarettes, marijuana or blunts would be most likely to smoke one of these brands—Black & Mild, Swisher Sweets, Phillies, White Owl or Garcia y Vega—which all primarily produce cigarillos or little cigar products. This is the first study about young adult cigar smoking that uses national data and was conducted by the nation’s largest organization devoted to preventing and stopping tobacco use. “While much effort has been focused over the past decade to increasing awareness about cigarettes and the dangers of smoking, cigar products have emerged as a profitable product for tobacco companies that, unlike cigarettes, are currently unregulated by the FDA and are taxed at a much lower rate,” Dr. Cheryl G. Healton president of the organization, said in the release.
Teenagers and college students live in tumultuous times. Physical changes, high school graduation, going off to college, moving away from the parents — all of these things can cause personality and mood changes in young adults. So how does one know the difference between “normal” bouts of depression, sadness and erratic behavior, and what could potentially be a red flag for suicidal tendencies? Every 15 minutes (about the amount of time that it takes to down a cup of coffee) one person will commit suicide, according to The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Many of these deaths could have been prevented by intervention from those close to the victims, but often the warning signs were ignored because the subject is awkward, according to Mary Ann Camann, PhD, an associate professor at the WellStar School of Nursing at Kennesaw State University near Atlanta.