Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents - Question 1

The program described by Cohen & Rice (1995) has attempted to address the risk of irresponsible drug use by the parents. In order to address the risk, the program has attempted to increase the interpersonal communication between the children and adolescents with their parents. In the first session children and their parents were allowed to share each other’s thoughts based on two facilitating questions. In the session two the facilitators conducted a discussion with the parents about the adolescent changes, strategies used by the students to manipulate parents, general child rearing practices to increase the understanding of the parents about the factors facilitating abuse. Parents were allowed to meet with their friendship circles to discus about the issues related to alcohol abuse.

Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents - Question 2

The major protective factor the current program has attempted most to enhance is parental resilience. The program is parent based and the targeted participants were the parents. This protective factor has been tried to enhance by incorporating tactics that might facilitate the parent children communication. Parents have been encouraged to talk to their children to discuss regarding their thoughts about drug abuse that facilitates the resilience of the parents. On the other hand the attempt to discuss about the issues and how those issues can be handled has provided the opportunity to enhance the protective factors further. Increasing parental resilience is highly effective as the students associated in the current study were from fifth- and seventh-grade which might help to take a preventive care by the parents in future.

Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents - Question 3

The prevention principle that is guiding this program is PRINCIPLE 1: prevention programs are to focus on the enhancement of protective factors and reverse or reduce the risk factors (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2003).

Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents - Question 4

In order to understand the attempt made by the program to meet the principle of protective factor is identifying the risks factors associated. One of the major risk factors is peer pressure that has been attempted to address in the current program. In order to work on these risk factors the questions designed for enhancing communication between the parents and children included inquiry about if peers influences in drug abuse and how it is done (Cohen & Rice, 1995). Another concern associated with it is the relationship among the risk factors and the protective factors which might enhance the chances of drug abuse. In order to address the same parental resilience has been attempted to be increased.

A parent of students of fifth- and seventh-grade has been selected as the participants of the study based on the guiding principle mentioned above. One of the sub-principles indicates that early intervention of the risks have greater impact than the later intervention. It is due to the attempt made for changing a child’s life path directing away from the issues to positive behaviors. The current study has also considered the age of the children while selecting their parents as participants of the study. It is due to the fact that different risk and protective factors can affect people from all age group, ethnicity, gender, environment and culture.

Reference List for Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents

Cohen, D. & Rice, J. (1995). A Parent-Targeted Intervention for Adolescent Substance Use Prevention: Lessons Learnt. Evaluation Review, 19 (2): 159 - 180. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944654/

National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2003). Preventing Drug Use among children and adolescents. Retrieved on: 30 July from http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/preventing-drug-abuse-among-children-adolescents-in-brief/prevention-principles

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