Adolescent Substance Abuse

Substance abuse is, and has always been, an indisputable fact of life. People – especially young people – abuse various legal and illegal substances for any number of reasons: to intensify feelings, to achieve deeper consciousness, to escape reality, to self-medicate. And as substance-abusing teenagers mature, they pose particular challenges to the professionals charged with keeping them clean and sober and helping them maintain recovery into adulthood.

Adolescent Substance Abuse: Evidence-Based Approaches to Prevention and Treatment offers clear, interdisciplinary guidance that grounds readers in the many contexts – developmental, genetic, social, and familial among them – crucial to creating effective interventions and prevention methods. Its contributors examine current findings regarding popularly used therapies, including psychopharmacology, residential treatment, school- and community-based programs, group homes, and specific forms of individual, family, and group therapy.

Accessible to a wide professional audience, this volume: (1) Presents evidence-based support for the treatment decision-making process by identifying interventions that work, might work, and don’t work. (2) Identifies individual traits associated with susceptibility to substance abuse and addiction in youth. (3) Provides a biogenetic model of the effects of drugs on the brain (and refines the concept of gateway drugs). (4) Evaluates the effectiveness of prevention programs in school and community settings. (5) Adds historical, spiritual, and legal perspectives on substance use and misuse. (6) Includes the bonus resource, the Community Prevention Handbook on Adolescent Substance Abuse and Treatment.

This volume is an all-in-one reference for counseling professionals and clinicians working with youth and families as well as program developers in state and local agencies and graduate students in counseling and prevention.