Dr Phil's unexpected TV prescription

Thursday, March 4, 2004

Pop psychologist Dr Phil McGraw's cure to teenage pregnancy is a trip to the Cayman Islands to learn scuba diving. 

That was the revelation made on his television programme, Dr Phil, which aired recently, during which he gave the Cayman Islands several minutes of laudatory air time on a show watched by millions in the United States. 

Dr Phil was counselling Alex, a 15-year-old unwed girl who several months ago gave birth to a baby. 

He feared she was at severe risk of becoming pregnant again if she did not find alternative ways to spend her time. "Right now, you're defining entertainment as boys, and the problem with that is that you don't have a passion in your life," he suggested. 

Dr Phil said he wanted to help her develop that passion and that in recent years he had become an avid devotee of scuba diving and that there was no better place to do that than in the Cayman Islands. 

He said he had arranged for her to go diving in Cayman with Tom Byrne, a marine biologist with the Cayman Marine Laboratory. 

"All right! Let's go now!" Alex exclaimed enthusiastically.

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