Bad Boys Make Sick Adults
Dec. 8, 2009— -- Bad boys grow up to be sick men, researchers say.
In a long-running British study of juvenile delinquency in boys, death and disability at age 48 were strongly linked to antisocial behavior in youth, according to Jonathan Shepherd of Cardiff University in Wales and colleagues.
The imbalances in mortality and disability had a range of associations, not just antisocial behavior, Shepherd and colleagues reported in the December issue of the Journal of Public Health.
In fact, the researchers were surprised "that the increase was not limited to substance abuse or other mental health problems known to be linked with an antisocial lifestyle, but included premature death and disability from a wide variety of chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and cancer," Shepherd wrote in a prepared statement.
The so-called Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (or CSDD), which began in 1961, has followed 411 boys from a working class urban area of south London.
The original sample included all the boys ages 8 or 9 enrolled in six state primary schools within a one-mile radius of the study's research office. For the current study, 365 of the original participants were interviewed, the researchers wrote.
By age 48, a total of 17 men had died, and data on other outcomes at age 48 was available for the 365 men interviewed for the current report, Shepherd and colleagues reported.
Of the 365, Shepherd and colleagues found, 17 were registered as disabled, so that 34 of the participants were either dead or disabled at age 48.
Of the 17 who died, 13 had been convicted of a crime. Three died in accidents (one while intoxicated), two from cancer, two from unknown causes and one each from cerebral hemorrhage, stroke, bronchopneumonia, motor neuron disease, drug overdose, and suicide, the researchers reported.
One of the four not convicted of a crime had died from an industrial injury, one from a cerebral hemorrhage, one from a myocardial infarction and one from suicide, they reported.
