Adolescent Drug Abuse EssayI. ) Introduction:”Crack, booze, pot, crystal- from the inner city to the suburbs to smalltowns, the world of the adolescent is permeated by drugs. When ‘a littleharmless experimentation’ becomes addiction, parents, teachers, and cliniciansare often at a loss. For this age group (roughly ages 13 to 23), traditionalsubstance abuse programs simply are not enough” (Nowinski, inside cover).
Today’s society provides many challenges for adolescents that ourparents never had to face. Pre-marital sex and pregnancy, alcohol abuse, anddrug addiction have always been around but they have never been more availableto adolescents than they are now. Adolescents are more on their own to takecare of themselves with more and more single parent households. The problem ofdrug and alcohol is a major one. Teenagers feel a need to drink and do drugs tofit in to peer groups.
The problem is widespread. The common thoughts thatdrugs are only in the city where the poor live but that is wrong. Any singleperson can get drugs from the inner city to the small rural towns of Texas andNebraska. It doesn’t matter where you are. There is a major need for adults tointervene and stop the problem at its beginnings, the adolescents. If we sithere and deny the fact that the problem is there then we are just settingourselves up for disaster.
II. ) Review of Literature:A Source 1:The first piece of literature that I used was a book written by Dr. Joseph Nowinski entitled Substance Abuse in Adolescents & Young Adults. It waswritten at the Elmcrest Psychiatric Institute in 1990. The book described Dr.
Nowinski’s study of adolescent addicts of drugs and alcohol. It goes on toexplain the need for the development of treatment plans for adolescents becauseconventional plans do not work on this age group. B) Source 2:The second source that I used was a journal article entitled “Prevalenceof substance abuse in a rural teenage population. ” It was written by WadeSilverman. This article was published in The Journal of Adolescent ChemicalDependency in 1991. This article presented the results of a survey done in arural school system to assess the prevalence rates of substance use and relatedlifestyle variables for teens and their parents.
C) Source 3:The third source that I used was a newspaper article taken from theFebruary 1, 1994 edition of the Los Angeles Times. The piece was written byMarlene Cimons. The article, entitled “Illicit drug use by youths shows markedincreases,” announced that the results of an annual survey showed that drug usehad increased significantly among teenagers between 1992 and 1993. D) Source 4:My fourth source was a journal article written by S.
Brown and others. It was taken from The Journal of Studies on Alcohol. The article was entitled “Conduct disorder among adolescent alcohol and drug abusers” and was published in1996. The article summarized a study that examined the extent to which conductdisorder type behavior predated substance use involvement among 166 adolescentsin treatment for alcohol and other drug abuse.
E) Source 5:My final source was another journal article that was taken from TheJournal of Marital and family Therapy. The article was written by H. Joanningand others in 1992. The article, entitled “Treating adolescent drug abuse: Acomparison of family systems therapy, group therapy, and family drug education,”describes the differential effectiveness of three models of adolescent drugabuse treatment. It compares the Family Systems Therapy, the Adolescent GroupTherapy, and the Family Drug Education models.
III. ) Methodology:I started out my research by going to the computers in the library andresearching journal and newspaper articles in the WinSpirs databases. I foundarticles from psychology, sociology, and science databases. I then looked forthe articles in the journal section of the library.
I found some of thearticles in the school library as well as using my local library. I also usedthe OPAC computer to find my book source. IV. ) Result of Information Gathered:A) Source 1:Dr. Nowinski’s book describes specific cases of adolescent drug abusethat he has worked with. He describes the different patterns of drug abuse andthe causes of such abuse.
He describes causes like alienation, low self- esteemand confidence, stress, and peer pressure. He goes into how development of newtreatment techniques are necessary because adolescent addictions are differentthan those of adults. He describes the process of counseling, denial andcompliance, and surrender and recovery. Nowinski stresses the need for familyintervention in cases .
