Media release from Peter Gluckman, PMCSA Science Advisory Committee

By international standards, New Zealand teenagers have high rates of risk-taking behaviours such as smoking, drunkenness and unsafe sex.

The pressures of the teenage years can also have tragic outcomes - we have the highest rate of youth suicide among developed countries.

The Prime Minister has asked his Chief Science Advisor, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, to report on practicable actions that could improve the transition through adolescence for New Zealand's young people. The interim report from the working group, entitled Improving the transition: reducing social and psychological morbidity during adolescence, has been released today.

This interim report, produced at the mid-point of the project's reporting time-frame, identifies the issues and indicates where

substantive conclusions have been reached, the direction of the working group's thinking, and the focus of ongoing work.

The complete report, which will be available in the last quarter of 2010, will be considerably more detailed with reference back to

the original literature. It is intended to provide a detailed evidence base from which policy might be developed.

A link to the interim report can be found on the PMCSA website: www.pmcsa.org.nz