Recognizing and preventing the disorder requires a collaborative effort among coaches, athletic trainers, parents, athletes and physicians. Young female athletes should be encouraged to eat nutritious, well-balanced meals, exercise in moderate amounts, and to tell their doctors about any changes in their periods. As schools across the country reopen for a new academic year, they find themselves between the proverbial rock and a hard place when it comes to youth violence. Clearly, violence involving children and adolescents, including violence within schools, is on the increase, and schools need to respond. Yet the educational system's main mission, the expertise of teachers and even the structure of the school itself makes violence prevention of relatively low priority and a difficult undertaking.
Recent statistics document the increasing prevalence of youth violence.
Gunshot wounds to children ages 16 and under have increased 300 percent in major urban areas since 1986. The Children's Defense Fund reported that everyday in the U.S. 16 children and adolescents are killed by firearms. When all violent crimes in the country are considered, over 123,000 children are arrested each year. Far from being a sheltered haven for learning, schools themselves are experiencing threats and actual violence. The Parents Resource Institute for Drug Education estimated that nearly one million U.S. students took guns to school during 1998.