U.K. Study Finds Link Between Youth Antisocial Behavior and Early Death, Disability

Boys with a history of juvenile delinquency as youths not only had more problems with addiction and mental illness later in life but also were more likely to be dead or disabled by age 48, according to researchers at Cardiff University in Wales.

MedPage Today reported Dec. 8 that data drawn from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, which has tracked working-class youth in south London since 1961, found that males who exhibited antisocial behavior at a young age were at increased risk of chronic illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and cancer.

The study by researcher Jonathan Shepherd was published in the December 2009 issue of the Journal of Public Health.