Texas youth: critical health problems and the need for nontraditional solutions

Mortality in youthful age groups in the United States is largely violent and increasingly due to homicide involving inner-city dwelling males. The majority of these deaths also involve decreased mental capacity as a result of drug and alcohol abuse. Most of the morbidity of youth is similarly related to high-risk behavior, also correlated with drug and alcohol abuse. Texas is no exception to national trends, as our review of statewide statistics confirms. It is important to recognize that the morbidity and mortality, and the developmental difficulties that lead to them, do not stop with the attainment of a mythical "age of majority," but in fact continue to at least age 25. The "forgotten age group," aged 18 to 25 years, is actually at highest risk, since those not in college have forfeited many of their social and financial supports. Most of these deaths should be preventable, if physicians will take creative leading roles in changing both their office practices and their levels of community involvement to deal with the epidemics of youthful death and dysfunction, and with the poverty and hopelessness of our urban ghettos that overwhelm all other risk factors.