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In Europe unintentional and intentional injuries account for 65 % of all deaths among adolescents. Injury is also the leading cause of hospitalisation in this age group accounting for 20 % of all visits to Accident & Emergency departments in most EU-Member States. For example, The mortality rate of adolescents in injuries (32/100 000) is lower than the mortality rate of the whole population (50/100 000) in 2005. In addition, the mortality rate of adolescents in attempted suicides (ranked second in the categories of causes of death among young people aged 15–24) and other causes of injury is also slightly higher than that of the whole population.
Figure 1: Mortality rate (1/100 000) among 15–24-year-olds in the EU25 (Eurostat, population and social conditions).
According to Eurostat, within the EU25 there are 58 million young people aged 15–24 which is 12.7 % of the total population. Road accidents, sport and leisure activities such as drowning, interpersonal violence, work related accidents and self-harm are the five main causes which have been identified. Whereas significant progress has been made in preventing injury deaths and disability in most other age groups, adolescents remain at excess risk from injury. For instance, for work injuries youth incidence rates are twice as high as that of adult employees. For traffic injuries, the rate of injury per kilometres driven is many times higher for adolescents than for adults and their susceptibility to alcohol intoxication related crashes is far higher than among adults. Inexperience, as well as physical, cognitive and emotional developmental characteristics play an important part in the risk of injury that youth are facing in their physical and social environments.
Figure 1: Figure: Mortality (%) among 15–24-year-olds in the EU25 in 2003 (Eurostat, population and social conditions).
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