Dr. Diane Sacks, a Toronto pediatrician and founding medical director of the teen clinic at North York General Hospital, also believes that paying more attention to teenagers will pay big dividends for the health-care system down the road. We can't just say adolescents are healthy and forget about them. That's a notion of health care that's outdated. During the formative years, teenagers make lifestyle choices involving nutrition, sexual responsibility, fitness and drug and alcohol use. They also go through a time of unparalleled emotional upheaval.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among teens after traffic fatalities.
They have body-image issues that lead to problems such as anorexia. And there are devastating diseases that appear at adolescence such as diabetes, epilepsy, depression and schizophrenia. Yet studies show that adolescents are the least likely to see a physician and, when they do, they tend to be treated summarily, with their visits lasting, on average, half as long as those of adults. For Dr. Marc Girard, a physician in the adolescent medical program at Sainte-Justice Hospital in Montreal, building a relationship with teenagers is key to developing healthy habits that will last a lifetime. Dr. Sacks said health specialists are needed because they learn the language and concerns of young people and are better able to treat them.