Adolescent Substance Abuse and Family Environment - Essay Sample

Adolescence is a stage at which growing boys and girls start experiencing different changes in their bodies where some of the changes may be the same to both genders. Substance consumption can affect anybody without choice regardless of gender, age, or even family background and may not even favor society's beliefs (Orth, 2018). The substance use may begin at a very tender age, at the age of eleven or twelve; this is really in the adolescence period. Here, the adolescents are very much exposed to substance abuse because they happen to be eager to know about everything that happens to be around them or done in their presence (Schindler & Bröning, 2015). This paper discusses the substances abuse has affected the youths specifically the teenagers. It also discusses the family environment where these substances are abused and role it has played in substance abuse.

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Early substance users may have increased conflict rates among their parents and the other family members, thus lowering the parental supervision on their behaviors (Orth, 2018). This is much different when compared to those teenagers who may engage in substance abuse later in their adolescence ages because they are using the substances without their parents’ awareness. If the teenagers rise conflicts with their parents, then this will interfere with the parent-child relations as the parents will have no time even to share some advisory talks with their children (Orth, 2018). This increases the levels of substance misuse among the youths because they may feel much free and with the independence to use anything they want at any time for there is no close monitoring.

The most abused substances are beer, alcohol, bhang, and khat, which may lead to many negative results and somebody typical functioning disorders (Krauss et al., 2020). Those using the substances may undergo different problems in their family surroundings at their early ages because the habit of substance misuse keeps on increasing as they grow up. This may lead to family peace disruption, fights, or even highly sexual related behaviors (Krauss et al., 2020).

Continued use of substances may also negatively result in mental illness or even affect family and communal participation. Early substance users may again undergo depression, school drop-out, increased violent cases, suicidal cases, early pregnancies, or even low carrying out of different assigned duties either at home or in schools (Krauss et al., 2020). The family has an essential role in controlling substance abuse because it is the necessary foundation of adolescents.

The family’s background state is much dependent on preventing substance abuse, and this is mainly if the background is either lacking or rich (Schindler & Bröning, 2015). The experience controls different desires of the growing adolescents where they have to be taught the importance of adapting to their families’ background state and cope with how it is. This will help them to overcome different challenges that they may encounter during their youth ages.

If parents of the adolescents using the substances happen to be misusing the importance as well, then it will be much hard for them to control or even advise their children on the dangers and effects of substance misuse (Das et al., 2016). Therefore, the parents, as leaders of the family, should lead in morally acceptable ways to guide the children in better ways to follow in life as they grow in their teenage.

Even though substance abuse may result in some dangerous effects, it does not imply that it can lead to family break-ups because it can be controlled through peaceful motivational and advisory talks in the family, parents’ behavioral reflections to their children, or even guidance and counseling sessions (Das et al., 2016). These sessions can either be carried out in schools, churches, or even communal gatherings involving youths to create awareness on the effects of substance misuse.

The research on parental substance abuse shows that it determines the adolescents' behavior concerning substantial abuse as some of the teenagers may result in either positively and others negatively. This is if they happen to know if their parents are also involved in drug misuse (Das et al., 2016). The parent-children relationship also matters a lot in controlling adolescent substance abuse. This is because the adolescents at this age happen to have various desires and mostly feel that they need freedom. But direct talks and closer relations between the children and the parents to the adolescents bring a positive impact to substance misuse control (Das et al., 2016). This prevents them from the abuse even in their after-adolescence ages.

During adolescence, some parents may tend to fear that their children will be misguided, but it results to be the opposite of their thoughts if they had talked about the dangers of substance misuse with their youths earlier (Das et al., 2016). This is because these teenagers will be bearing it in their minds on the impacts of drug abuse, and it will help coming up with positive reactions towards drug misuse, thus discouraging the abuse.

Many parenting methods vary in different families, which mostly have to do with the duration that the parents have with their teenagers. Creating time to spend with the adolescents and giving advice to them will positively result in substance misuse control (Das et al., 2016). The youths may also be influenced by substance abuse by the peer groups where their age mates and who might be misusing them may also introduce them to using the substances. Parents have a role to play in monitoring the type of friends that their children are interacting with, and this will act as a control measure in substance abuse (Schindler & Bröning, 2015).

It is found that there are no enough preventive measures ion substance abuse, but the available control measures need to be much supported. Supporting such programs will mainly help in making the programs strong, thus enhancing the creation of awareness to the youths on the substance abuse effects, thus making them not that vulnerable to misuse (Segal et al., 2014). It also calls for the government to support different centers like the rehabilitation centers because this can reach many people and mostly the youths other than individual-based control measures (Segal et al., 2014). The government support will make the centers much more robust, thus educating about the effects of substance abuse.

Although the rehabilitation workers need to be highly supported to create awareness on the effects of drug abuse, they also need to be highly knowledgeable as well. If they happen to be having inadequate skills, then this results negatively to those in search of preventive measures for their addicts or even their addiction (Segal et al., 2014). Some parents tend to take it as if when they closely supervise their teenagers’ behaviors and even control them, they may get angry over them because the parents may see the youths as somehow grown and need freedom (Segal et al., 2014). This will lead to increased substance misuse among adolescents because they will have the independence to interact with whoever they want, be it a substance misuser or not.

Family neighborhoods may also affect the behavior of the teenagers if some of the neighboring people happen to be substance users and in very close interaction with the adolescents (Moradi, 2019). This may result negatively because it can quickly introduce them to the misuse due to the close relation with the neighboring substance abusers.

There should also be questions among the youths on how they cope in surroundings where substances are being misused. This questioning should involve all the children, either using the implications or not, which will help prevent self-rejection (Moradi, 2019). The questions should also include how and when the substance abuse starts and how to avoid it because this will help create awareness of the dangers resulting from substance misuse. They should also be asked to give out their future targets in life and how they intend to attain their set goals (Segal et al., 2014).

It is also essential to identify the addicted youths, create some time to have motivational talks with them, tell them the outcomes of substance abuse, and educate them on the preventive measures and how to get out of the addiction captivity (Moradi, 2019). This will help them quit substance misuse, thus lowering the abuse and effectively promoting the youths to live healthy lives in their future.

Substance misuse may negatively affect the youths’ learning abilities, thus lowering it, but this is merely preventable by either the parents, guardians, or other people in the surroundings: people in the society (Moradi, 2019). If this happens, then the youths undergoing studies will need different durations in revisiting their school assignment with closer supervision from the parents. This will improve their lowered performance, thus motivating them to keep on studying and remain academically active.

Addicted adolescents also need a peaceful environment full of love, peace, and much care to regain their normal body functioning (Segal et al., 2014). This will help erase the feeling of neglect by the teenagers in the society, thus making them communally active in participating in different development programs of the organization hence promoting communal growth.

The addicted youths may also need much education on how to overcome the addiction and even control their drug abuse habits (Segal et al., 2014). This will help them to educate the other teenagers later and discourage them from substance misuse, thus leading to bringing up morally upright youths, and this has an advantage to the families as well as the community for it will enhance peace (Schindler & Bröning, 2015).

In conclusion, there should be many rallies on drug abuse control measures to help hold the youths’ dignity steed, make them live better lives in the future, and even avoid substance abuse addiction. It also calls for the church to include drug misuse talks in church services to help the teenagers live morally upright. The community also has a role to play in controlling drug abuse because if the youths engage themselves in the abuse on the community’s watch, then this will finally interrupt the peace. Still, if the people in the society will venture into controlling the misuse, they will restore their equilibrium.

Again family environment has contributed significantly to substance abuse. Peer pressure among youth living in the same area may engage themselves in substance abuse compared to those living with parents. A good number of cases of substance abuse have been contributed by the environment the teenager engages in. Therefore, parents need to need to play an essential role in monitoring the teenagers’ environment.

References

Das, J. K., Salam, R. A., Arshad, A., Finkelstein, Y., & Bhutta, Z. A. (2016). Interventions for adolescent substance abuse: An overview of systematic reviews. Journal of Adolescent Health, 59(4), S61-S75.

Krauss, S., Orth, U., & Robins, R. W. (2020). Family environment and self-esteem development: A longitudinal study from age 10 to 16. Journal of personality and social psychology, 119(2), 457.

Moradi, P., Fathali Lavasani, F., & Dejman, M. (2019). Adolescent substance abuse and family environment: a qualitative study. International Journal of High Risk Behaviors and Addiction, 8(2).

Orth, U. (2018). The family environment in early childhood has a long-term effect on self-esteem: A longitudinal study from birth to age 27 years. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(4), 637.