TEENAGERS are indulging in hedonistic lifestyles involving unprecedented levels of group and under-age sex that risk an epidemic of health problems.

School nurses treating sexual infections and offering alcohol and drug addiction services said yesterday that many children have dangerously amoral attitudes to relationships and high-risk habits such as drug taking and alcohol abuse.

Health professionals addressing the Royal College of Nursing’s annual congress reported dramatic rises in sex among the young, including alarming new trends such as “daisy chaining” — where groups of teenagers indulge in a variety of sexual activities.

Frontline nurses said that it was hard to believe some of the problems they encountered almost daily, from playground sexual crazes to the repercussions of sexual abuse, prostitution, drug use and self-harm.

Judy McRae, a sexual health nurse and London regional officer for the RCN, said that a new phenomenon has been identified among the capital’s teenagers — involving groups going to one another’s homes to have sex with a series of partners.

“Colleagues are coming across reports of groups of young people having sex in large groups,” she said. “It is known as daisy chaining and is obviously very worrying as far as sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy is concerned.

“As we understand it, it involves groups of older teenagers going round to each other’s homes and having sex in a similar way as swinging. It is very new and is only just starting to be talked about.”

The group called for more school nurses and said that the days when the job involved being a source of sympathy and sticking-plasters were long gone.

Liz Allan, chair of the School Nurses’ Forum, said that it was difficult to grasp the extremes of cruelty experienced by some children.

Few nurses, when they qualified, had any idea of what they would be doing. “Glory be that the majority of the population doesn’t know what is going on,” she said.

Very early sexual activity and child prostitution were common problems, she said.

“Most school nurses at some time in their career will deal with young people who are subjected to sexual exploitation — boys and girls who prostitute themselves, children exploited sexually as a result of coercion, violence, trafficking, or who are on the fringes of the law and seeking affection outside their families.”

The trend spells even more trouble for Britain’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Among teenagers, such infections have doubled in ten years, with new cases among those under 20 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland up from 669,291 in 1991 to 1,332,910 in 2001.

Among the wider population, cases of chlamydia, Britain’s most common sexually transmitted infection, have risen threefold since 1995. In 2003 there were 89,818 cases diagnosed in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, up 9 per cent in a year. More than 1,000 girls aged 14 and under had abortions last year, according to government statistics — up 8 per cent on the previous year.

Ministers have pledged to halve pregnancies among under-18s by 2010, and £138 million has been allocated since 1998 to fund the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, which involves making the morning-after pill, condoms and sex education more easily available.

But studies show that teenage pregnancies are going up fastest in areas on which the unit focuses, and sexual diseases among 16 to 19-year-olds have risen significantly since it was launched.

Steve Jamieson, a sexual health adviser to the RCN, told yesterday of a 14-year-old boy who had become HIV-positive as a result of sex. He had greeted the result of his test with disbelief, saying: “That only happens to older people”, Mr Jamieson said.

Kathy French, the RCN’s sexual health adviser, said that among young boys the currency of manhood was to be sexually active.

“Once, taking an apprenticeship in a trade would be the making of manhood,” she said. “Today so few get this chance that sex has taken its place.

“They are now mirroring the adult world where, in soaps and magazines, everyone is having sex. It has become almost a definition of masculinity. That’s sad, really.”

An RCN survey of more than 1,200 school nurses found that numbers needed to double to ensure that every child had access to a nurse at school. In state schools, the average school nurse has to cover at least ten schools, caring for an average of 2,400 pupils.

The survey showed that of the school nurses questioned, 80 per cent had dealt with child protection issues, 90 per cent had given sexual health education and advice, 65 per cent had been involved with substance misuse in children, 90 per cent worked with obesity in school and 80 per cent with bullied children.

Beverly Malone, general secretary of the RCN, said: “School nurses of today are not just about sick bays and nits. Their job covers a gamut of responsibilities from immunisation, health promotion and child protection through to counselling, sexual health and drugs education.

“It’s clear from our survey just how few school nurses we have. We are calling on the next government to strengthen the role of the school nurse and develop a clear strategy to double their numbers.”

HEDONISTIC ADOLESCENTS

• Nearly 2,000 children aged 14 and under are in hospital each year because of drunkenness, a rise of 13.5 per cent over the past six years in England
  
  
• The number of women under 25 in hospital with mental health problems triggered by alcohol has risen by 9 per cent in seven years. The rate among girls under 14 rose by 24 per cent
  
  
• 38 per cent of teenagers in Britain — 42 per cent of boys and 35 per cent of girls — admit trying illicit drugs
  
  
• More than a quarter of girls aged 15-16 admitted binge drinking in a survey of 100,000 European students
  
  
• Of 15-year-olds who have had sex, one in three said they did not use a condom when they last had intercourse and one in five said they used no contraception
  
  
• Between 1995 and 2002, cases of gonorrhoea more than doubled in boys aged 13-19. Cases of chlamydia also tripled
  
  
• 42 out of every 1,000 girls aged 15-17 become pregnant

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