"It depends very much on age. If the figures are broken down you'll find under-16s are not as involved as older teenagers," he says. "It's one of my bugbears that this chronological line that is always drawn stops 14- and 15-year-olds having a say. I think it has a detrimental effect. Fourteen- and 15-year-olds don't want to be treated like five-year-olds but nurses and doctors go to the parents first, who then decide what the teenager is told."
The poll, which questioned 450 young people, also found that educational talks about the illness were rare, with fewer than one in five having experienced any such discussion in their school.
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