1 Hartley Jacob Hartley Professor Peter Goldmen English 110 November 30, 2005 Library Assignment Carroll Sean, Robert Riffenburgh, Timothy Roberts, and Elizabeth Myhre. "Tattoos and Body Piercings as Indicators of Adolescent Risk-Taking Behaviors." PEDIATRICS Vol. 109 No. 6 June 2002, pp. 1021-1027 This article was published in the June 6 issue of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The authors are Sean Carroll, Robert Riffenburgh, Timothy Roberts, and Elizabeth Myhre; their purpose was to see if there is a link between risk-taking behaviors and body modifications in adolescents. Dr. Carroll and his group surveyed 484 individuals ranging from age 12 to 22 about their behavior patterns and whether they had tattoos and piercings in places other than their earlobes. All were patients at the Adolescent Medical Division of the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. The study confirms what many already suspect. The researchers found that participants with tattoos and/or piercings were more likely to have engaged in risk-taking behaviors, and to have done so to a greater extent, than individuals without either type of body modification. The risk-taking behaviors found included eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual activity, violence and considering suicide. But the association between looking rebellious and being destructive surprised even the researchers; "With tattoos and piercings becoming much more common these days, I didn't expect the correlation to be as strong as it was," said Doctor Sean Carroll, the study's lead author (1023).
Hartley 2 While the authors admit the study simply validates assumptions that many already had, they hope it spurs health care providers and parents to recognize tattoos or piercings as a prompt for a serious discussion. "We wanted give to physicians and nurse practitioners an idea that, yes, if you see a child with piercings or tattoos, this is somebody who could be at risk . . . and you need to start asking questions," said Elizabeth Myhre, a nurse practitioner (1023). Those in the tattooing industry are predictably defensive about the assertion that kids with tattoos and piercings are more likely to be involved in risky behaviors. "You have lots of kids without tattoos doing that stuff, too," said Joe Kaplan, president of the Tattoo Artists Guild, based in Mount Vernon, N.Y. (1025). Some physicians say the study's conclusions may be overly dramatic and outdated. David Kaplan, chief of adolescent medicine at the University of Colorado and chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on adolescence, said "10 or 15 years ago, I would have accepted the notion that tattoos and piercings were closely correlated with risk-taking behaviors". "In more recent years", he said, "There's been such an explosion in kids' getting body modification that it's become a more common pr...