Teen smoking linked to drinking and drug use is reported on Shrink Rap:
“If a teenager feels smoking is socially acceptable and widely practiced, they are much more likely not only to smoke, but to also drink and possibly use marijuana,” says lead author Dr. Jennifer A. Epstein, assistant professor of public health in the Division of Prevention and Health Behavior at Weill Cornell Medical College. “While the differences between how boys and girls are influenced by these social factors are subtle, they could help us develop new gender-specific educational tactics for preventing these behaviors.”…more at Shrink Rap
Shrink Wrap blog shares an interesting post concerning a study that links teen drinking to behavioral problems.
“Forty-three per cent of students who reported behavioral or other problems also reported having been drunk more than 10 times in their lives, while only 27 per cent of students who reported few or no conduct problems had been drunk more than 10 times. But boys were only slightly more likely than girls to report drinking heavily.”
The difficulty parents have assessing the level of problem that substance abuse is causing for their troubled teen is well known. Knowledge that such a link between behavioral problems and drinking exists can help parents to disentangle the complexity of the riddle they are facing. The post notes:
“it may be particularly important to focus on teens with attention and conduct problems and girls with anxiety and depression.”
It speaks to our experience that the specific indicators of difficulty for troubled teen girls surrounding depression include a vulnerability to expressive drinking and substance abuse.
Recently Jeff Brain wrote an interesting post noting the difference in terminology between troubled teens and struggling teens. As Lon Woodbury points out:
“The term Struggling Teen has broader connotations. As we use it at Woodbury Reports, it can include a troubled teen with serious disorders but primarily includes teens who, for some reason or other, are floundering or failing in mainstream society and schools. These might include children floundering because of an undetected Learning Disability or Learning Difference. It might also include children that have an “entitled” mentality, or ones who internalized some criticism in the past and have lost all semblance of self confidence.”
Along this spectrum is another term, problem teens, which casts a net even wider to include in the spectrum students that get entangled with criminality and troubles with the law. Often the difficulty begins with money.
“In a survey conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, measuring the impact of extra money, boredom, and stress on substance abuse in the teen population, researchers found that teens who receive $25 or more per week in allowance are nearly twice as likely to drink, smoke, and use illegal drugs.” Susan Runge, Money Issues and Teen Substance Abuse
A spectrum of classification can be useful to help us recognize that the issues teens face lay along a continuum. As recovery programs recognize, movement along this spectrum, or progression, is a common outcome when help is not sought.
Ripples
