Family Based Interventions

The role of family based interventions in the prevention of substance abuse in Adolescents;

Over the past few decades, Substance use and abuse among adolescents has continued to be important public health concerns that contribute greatly to morbidity throughout globally. The present essay aimed to investigate the family role in the prevention of substance use in adolescents. For several years, substantial research efforts have been undertaken to understand the epidemiology of substance use and abuse. The knowledge gained from these research studies has been important in understanding and developing effective prevention and treatment approaches. According to various datasets, the prevalence of drug use, alcohol and tobacco increases rapidly

Scientific evidence has shown that families that maintain certain discipline can help mediate the chaos and stress of addiction. This lack of parental attention seems to be more detrimental to girls and boys; hence, the need for family strengthening interventions that encourage parents to be more involved with their children. (Resnik, 1997) By educating parents with proper information, the parents are able to provide protective factors to their children. The goal of family-based prevention programs is to promote positive behaviour development in youth by instilling proper family relational skills and inculcating behaviours that increase parent/child

Some longitudinal studies [Johnston 2002], including the National Longitudinal Adolescent Health Survey [Resnick 75] that accompanied preteens during periods normally associated with drug use, found that parental factors were still the most important. These evidence-based interventional programs included family interventions approaches targeting indicated prevention with diagnosed youth. Examples of programs that cover this area include all of the more costly family therapy interventions serving individual dysfunctional families by highly skilled and trained professional family therapists, such as Brief Strategic and Structural Family Therapy [91] and Multidimensional Family Therapy [Liddle, 2009] for treating drug abusing youth, and likewise Multi systemic Therapy and Functional Family Therapy for treating acting out, conduct disordered, or highly delinquent youth. Family-based interventions emphasized the effectiveness they can be difficult and expensive to implement on a large scale [128] particularly if home visits are involved. Most of the family interventions discussed in this essay were