Although evidence exists which suggests that an “antisocial lifestyle” has a negative impact on health, more public health initiatives need to be undertaken to reduce the risks of dangerous behavior, according to an editorial in the British Medical Journal.

Factors behind an antisocial lifestyle include antisocial behavior in childhood, impulsivity, school failure, belonging to an antisocial family, poor parenting and economic deprivation, write Professor Jonathan Shepherd of the University of Wales College of Medicine and Professor David Farrington of the University of Cambridge.

In addition to promiscuity and drug taking, these factors can lead to truancy, reckless driving and violent and non-violent offending, which have been shown to be strongly linked to illness and mortality risk, the authors say.

An antisocial lifestyle has also been linked to injury sustained in assaults between the ages of 16 and 18, and injury on the roads between the ages 27 and 32.

The authors say, “While links between deprivation and health have been widely studied, links between antisocial lifestyle and health have been neglected.”

The authors call for interventions within schools and families, which could include pre-school education and management training for parents. The police also have an important role to play with effective interventions, they say. This should include targeting violence hot spots and arresting repeat offenders, drunk drivers and suspects in domestic violence incidents.

However, the researchers praise the “logical” move to transfer responsibility for the prison service within England and Wales from the Home Office to the Department of Health.

They say that it is within the punitive system that links between health and antisocial behavior are greatest and add the move is “a prompt to both acknowledge relationships between crime, injury and illness and to develop integrated prevention and treatment”.


Source: The British Medical Journal

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