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Teens who get involved in graffiti 'tagging' may be showing early symptoms of a personality disorder, an Australian psychiatrist says.
Professor Graham Martin, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Queensland and colleagues, studied more than 2600 people aged 13.
He says the study, presented at an international child and adolescent mental health conference in Melbourne this week, found that teens who graffiti "are significantly different to those who do not graffiti".
"They satisfy the ... criteria for conduct disorder and or delinquency and later down the track a number of these young people go on to antisocial behaviour personality disorder," he says.
"These young people ... were very antisocial on a range of other factors. They weren't just mildly conduct disordered, they were scoring to the extreme range of antisocial behaviour."
Martin says the findings of the study show that conventional methods of handling young graffiti offenders, such as dealing with them under the legal system, are doomed to failure.
But he says the good news is that with intensive individual, family and community therapy it's possible to put people back on track.
"Graffiti may be one gateway into working with young people to assist them to find a new direction," he says.
"It may be extending their creative skills or just sitting down with them and saying, listen you've had a bit of a shit life haven't you?"
Subtexts of graffiti
Martin says tagging conveys a number of messages, from saying "hello, I'm here" to being a territorial marker and an expression of rage against authority.
He says the study found adolescent graffitists had done around six to eight other acts, such as setting fires, beating people up and stealing.
They also had higher rates of drug use, academic failure, physical and sexual abuse, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
Of the teenagers studied, about 12% of boys and almost 11% of girls had done some graffiti.
It may even be possible to pick a future graffitist, Martin says, underlining the importance of early intervention.
"You can pick many of these young people somewhere around the age of three," he says.
"The average kindergarten teacher will tell you, I don't like that child, I can't work with them, they spit at me, they spit at the other kids, they hit people, they won't learn.
"You can certainly predict which ones will go on to antisocial behaviour, and within that graffiti is going to be one of the things that stands out."
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