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The National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) tells us the basic prevention program. They include:
- Risk and Protective Factors.
- Forms of abuse of substances, legal and illegal.
- The type of drug abuse problem in the local community, modifiable risk factors, and identified protective factors.
- Tailoring programs to the assessed needs of the community.
- Enhancing family bonding, the bedrock of the relationship between parents and children.
- Early (preschool) behaviors/risk factors such as aggressive behavior, poor social skills, and academic difficulties.
- Early aggression, academic failure, and school dropout.
- Adolescent prevention should address increase academic and social competence.
- General population prevention programs provided at key transition points.
- Effective community prevention programs combine to be more effective than a single program alone.
- Effective community prevention programs present consistent, community-wide messages in each setting.
- Effective communities adapt programs but maintain fidelity to the core elements (structure, content, delivery) to get results.
- Prevention programs need to be long-term with booster sessions.
- Classroom management practices are critical to providing prevention programs.
- Interactive prevention programs are most well received.
- Research-based prevention programs are cost-effective.
Statistics
Causes
What causes substance abuse? The answers are complex. A number of factors are involved, including:
- Genetic factors
- Social factors
- Environmental factors
- Cultural factors, and others
Our society has become a culture of substance users. Whether we like it or not, we are encouraged to use substances like caffeine, alcohol, prescription drugs, pain medication and anti-depressants to help us deal with the ever increasing complexity of our daily lives. Children growing up in such an environment face the difficult task of making healthy decisions and getting the information and support they need to make them. Because the causes are so complex, prevention efforts must be comprehensive, holistic and based on solid scientific research.
What works?
What do we do to keep people from using substances to begin with? Prevention! This is very different from treatment. Prevention implements proactive ideas before substance use begins. Prevention works on whole populations. Prevention involves the whole community as well as individual members in that community.
Effective prevention efforts target the person (individual), the drug or substance and the environment. To be effective, efforts must be sustained over time and be flexible enough to adjust to changes in population and other cultural elements. These programs are studied and assessed stringently before being considered effective.
Helping America’s Youth is formed by ten agencies working together to provide community resources for prevention practices. These agencies include Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, Education, Agriculture, Interior, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Risk and protective factors need to be considered before starting any prevention program. Research has begun to identify risk and protective factors associated with adolescent substance abuse, which are based on events or life experiences that contribute to an increased likelihood of substance abuse and other problems. Protective factors are those events or experiences which research has shown to decrease the probability of substance abuse and related problems. The risk and protective factors occur within individual, family, and school/peer and community environments. Research has demonstrated that reducing risk factors and increasing protective factors has positive effect on reducing adolescent substance abuse and related problems. (Hawkins & Catalano)
For more information, please call (231) 724-6350.
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