Drug Abuse Prevention - Education

Although genetic, psychological, and socioeconomic factors impact the risk of kids becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol use longitudinal and cross-sectional studies, the concept of parental monitoring has emerged recently as the primary focus of substance abuse in children. Experts agree an optimal mix of prevention interventions is required to address substance use issues in communities because they are among the most complex social problems to prevent and reduce.

Teaming Up Education and Prevention

Drug and Alcohol Prevention Starts with Education. Educating Parents and administrators about the problem and the available resources to put prevention programs into action.

Preventing mental and substance use disorders in adolescents and young adults is critical. Behavioral symptoms often signal the development of a behavioral disorders years before the condition manifests itself. People with mental health issues are more likely to use alcohol or drugs than those not affected by a mental illness. If communities and families can intervene early, avoid behavioral health disorders.

Data have shown that early intervention following the first episode of mental illness can impact. In addition, specialized services shortly after the first episode effectively improves clinical and functional outcomes.

Hazelden is a good resource for educational materials on mental health and substance abuse.

College Drug and Alcohol Abuse Education and Prevention

Here is an excellent resource for college students on drug and alcohol prevention, education, and wellness.

College Drinking Prevention Information

When young adults leave home for college or work and are on their own for the first time, their risk for drug and alcohol abuse is very high. Consequently, young adult interventions are needed as well. Research has shown that the critical risk periods for drug abuse are during major transitions in children’s lives. The first big transition for children is when they leave the security of the family and enter school. Later, when they advance from elementary school to middle school, they often experience new academic and social situations, such as getting along with a broader group of peers. At this stage—early adolescence—children are likely to encounter drugs for the first time.

Adolescents face additional social, emotional, and educational challenges when they enter high school. At the same time, they may show greater availability of drugs, drug abusers, and social activities involving drugs. These challenges can increase the risk of abusing alcohol, tobacco, and other substances.

Binge Drinking

Binge drinking while in college has always been a big problem for most universities. Over the years, there has been a long history of major drunk partying and risky behavior. “Keg parties” and fraternity drinking escapades are legendary. Movies like “Back to School” are all about the alcohol drinking insanity at college.

Study May Fuel College Binge Drinking Reduction

According to this recent study at the University of Buffalo, being aware of the cancer risks associated with heavy alcohol consumption was a significant deterrent to binge drinking.

Family Action Can Reduce Smoking in Young People

“Preventing children from starting to smoke is important to avoid a lifetime of addiction, poor health, and social and economic consequences,” said Professor Philip Baker from QUT’s Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation. The findings in the Cochrane Library of the Cochrane Collaboration discovered family intervention reduces the rate of young people starting to smoke.

A study by Canada’s University of Calgary and QUT into the effectiveness of family-based programs has found these programs can be highly effective in stopping children from taking up smoking. The findings are in the Cochrane Library of the Cochrane Collaboration, a worldwide independent network of health practitioners, researchers, patient advocates, and others from 120-plus countries preparing high-quality information to support health decisions.

Family Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention

5 Tips for Preventing Drug or Alcohol Abuse in Your Family

Would you please pay attention to friends and get to know these friends–as well as their parents?
Although it’s essential to a child’s sense of independence and self-esteem to have a certain amount of free time, don’t let your children have too much of it. Get your kids involved in the community and after-school activities until they are old enough to work part-time or get paid to babysit or mow lawns.
Parents need to remain consistent when enforcing rules and enacting consequences for not following directions—failing to make children experience the ramifications of breaking the rules once is enough for a parent to seem much less authoritative and sincere to an impressionable preteen.
If prescription medications and alcohol are outside the home, parents should check these items daily to ensure they have not been tampered with or used.
Staying upfront and honest with your child about substance abuse means staying upfront and honest with yourself. Parents in denial about their child’s drug or alcohol problem may be destroying their child’s future as well as their own.

Talking with your child if you suspect they are using drugs or alcohol, don’t confront them. Incited by anger and disbelief, confrontations only succeed in making a child feel abandoned by their parents and alone with their problems. Alternately, a calm, rational discussion is sustained initially by curiosity and then maintained by the parent’s compassionate, caring attitude towards the child.

Parental monitoring appears consistently in theoretical models concerning the evolution of substance abuse and antisocial behavior in preteens and adolescents. Research strongly indicates that children of parents who fail to monitor them tend to abuse illegal substances adequately, skip school and “hang out” with peers who also use drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

Setting Rules and Stick to Them

In addition to giving children a clear set of rules about whom they can befriend, where they go, and when they must be home, parents also need to monitor their children’s behaviors and activities actively. Fearing hostile reactions by establishing good ground rules for their children should not deter parents from being “uncool” parents.

The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc. recommends the following rules:

Children under 21 cannot drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
Children are not allowed to ride in vehicles with anyone who has been using drugs or drinking alcohol.
Older siblings will not encourage younger siblings to use drugs or drink.
Children under 21 can’t have parties at home without parental supervision.
Children are not allowed to attend parties with drugs and alcohol.

Children are Natural Imitators

A fascinating study conducted at Dartmouth Medical School involved 120 children between the ages of two and six “shopping” for their Ken or Barbie doll. Researchers gave the children a store stocked with various grocery items, including beer, cigarettes, and wine. Told they could “buy” whatever they wanted, these children bought alcohol (61 percent), cigarettes (28 percent), and food. Children of parents who smoked were four times more likely to purchase cigarettes. Children of parents who drank at least once a month were three times likely to buy beer or wine.

In addition, this study found that “children who viewed adult-content movies were five times more likely to buy alcohol.”

Parents do not have to be perfect role models, but they must realize how much their actions have on their children. For example, suppose a parent repeatedly lectures against the “evils” of illegal drugs and alcohol to their child but drinks or smokes marijuana. In that case, those words are meaningless to that child—actions matter, not words.

Minimize the Risk Factors

Although it is difficult in today’s economically and socially turbulent society to maintain a completely stable home environment for their children, parents need to take deliberate steps to minimize conflict as much as possible and avoid exposing children to traumatic volatility in the household. In addition to upheaval in the home, other risk factors contributing to drug or alcohol abuse in children include:

Siblings and parents who abuse drugs and alcohol
Poor communication/attachment with parents (parental absenteeism)
Child neglect/abuse
Children who suffer from an undiagnosed or untreated mental disorder, such as ADHD, depression, panic, and obsessive-compulsive disorder
Living in overcrowded conditions with underemployed/unemployed/uneducated parents
Witnessing consistent marital conflict in the home (yelling, hitting, threatening)
Living in economically depressed neighborhoods with high crime rates

Intervening early to minimize risk factors typically affects a significantly more significant impact on changing the bio-psychosocial development of a child than later intervention. In addition, while these risk factors affect children and adolescents of all groups, they also exhibit disparate effects on their ethnicity, age, culture, and gender.

College Alcohol Use Stats

1,700 college students between the ages of 18 -24 die each year from alcohol misuse.
Ninety-seven thousand college students reported cases of sexual abuse because of alcohol use.
696,000 reported cases of students assaulted by someone who had been drinking.
599,000 college students blamed unintentional injuries on alcohol use.

Alcohol Drug Abuse Prevention Education