Report reveals disturbing information about young Australians

Jun 3 2008

A new report has revealed some disturbing information about young Australians.

The report offers comprehensive up-to-date information on injury incidence, including transport accidents, intentional self-harm and suicide, assault and accidental poisoning, hospitalisations and deaths among young people in Australia.

The report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) says transport accidents and suicide are the major causes of injury death among young Australians.

Among young Australians injury as a whole was responsible for two-thirds of all deaths of young people aged 12 to 24 years in 2005, and for one in six hospitalisations, while transport accidents were responsible for 44% of injury deaths and 20% of injury hospitalisations in this age group.

Suicides accounted for 32% of injury deaths.

The author of the report, Deanna Eldridge a project officer with the AIHW's Children, Youth and Families Unit, says that even though the injury death rates had been halved in the last two decades, among young people, injury remained the major cause of death.

Ms Eldridge says this decline was almost entirely due to a 70% decrease in transport accident deaths in young people, along with a modest fall in suicide deaths over the same period.

However the disturbing news is that despite the drop in the suicide death rate, hospitalisation rates for intentional self-harm among young people increased by 43% between 1996 and 2006 and this was more so in young women where a 51% increase was seen as against a 27% increase for young men.

The figures paint a worrying picture with more than twice as many young women hospitalised for intentionally harming themselves and young men with a suicide rate almost four times that of young women.

Also on the rise are the hospitalisation rates for assault in young people with young people accounting for as much as 33% of all hospitalisations and one in seven deaths from assault.

The AIHW report, Injury Among Young Australians, says each year almost 8,000 young Australians need hospital treatment after fighting, being stabbed or hit with blunt objects and in the year 2005-06, 27 young people died as a result of such assaults.

Also of concern is that aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youngsters had considerably higher rates of death and hospitalisation due to injury than other young Australians and the hospitalisation rate for assault was six times higher.

Remoteness and socioeconomic disadvantage further exacerbated the hospitalisation and death rates from injury.

The AIHW report says 18 to 24 year olds are three times more likely to be injured while under the influence of alcohol or drugs than other age groups and harmful and hazardous alcohol use are risk factors for both being victimised and perpetrating youth violence, and is a priority area for intervention.