4 Troubled Teens Blog

Researchers at Temple University have found that teenagers who engage in heavy drinking are also more likely to smoke heavily.

Dr. Brian Daly and his colleagues used data from 2450 Philadelphia high school students in grades nine through 12. They asked the students how many cigarettes they smoked per day and how many times they had five or more drinks in a row during the last month, and found a link between binge drinking and heavy smoking.

"We can't just focus on educating adolescents about the dangers of smoking or drinking," Dr. Daly said in an Aug. 11 ScienceDaily article. "We need to address both as one health risk."

Dr. Daly's study was presented at the American Psychological Association's annual meeting.

Labels: research, teens, tobacco use, alcohol_abuse

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Thanks to a federal grant and some creativity, Smithfield, Rhode Island, has seen a 13 percent decrease in underage drinking. The grant was part of a $12-million award given to Rhode Island to bolster the fight agains underage drinking and marijuana use.

Instead of doling out small amounts to every community, the state chose to focus on dividing the money among the top 14 communities with teen substance abuse problems, said Jeannie Vickers, coordinator of prevention services at Tri-Town Community Action Agency. (Source: The Providence Journal)

Vickers told the Journal that the Agency needed to generate some original ideas, knowing the state wanted more than just another "Just Say No" campaign. Instead, they created changes in law enforcement and ordinances related to underage drinking.

Labels: prevention, alcohol_abuse

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Almost a quarter of all people who commit suicide were drunk when they took their lives, according to a new report from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Alex Crosby and his colleagues used data from 17 states that are enrolled in the National Violent Death Reporting System between 2005 through 2006, and found that 24 percent of suicides involved alcohol intoxication.

"The mixture of depression and alcohol abuse is highly volatile and potentially fatal," Dr. David Katz, Director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University, said in a June 18 article by Steven Reinberg of HealthDay News. "Diligent, ongoing efforts to find and treat depression and to prevent excessive alcohol intake are needed so the two collide less often."

Other studies have established a strong connection between teen suicide and alcohol abuse. In February 2008, researchers with Georgia State University's Institute of Public Health reported that youth who begin drinking before age 13 are three times more likely to attempt suicide than are non-drinking peers.

Labels: suicide, alcohol_abuse

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Nearly two dozen cities in Minnesota have law about "social hosting." These laws hold adults accountable for providing alcohol to underage drinkers. But another Minnesota city may soon have a more serious regulation on the books.

Chaska was the first area city to pass such a law, in 2007. Adults there who host gatherings and "know or reasonably should know" that minors are drinking can be arrested.

But Minnetonka would prosecute adults who host gatherings where conditions are "ripe" for underage drinking but don't take steps to stop it." (Source: The Star-Tribune)

The challenge with the ordinance in Chaska, and others like it, is that the adult has to know an underage person could or would consume alcohol. The Minnetonka law removes that challenge, making adults easier to prosecute when they're complicit in allowing a situation to develop in which underage drinking is likely.

Though some parents mistakenly believe that alcohol is a relatively harmless substance, the truth is that teen drinking is a dangerous activity that puts young people at increased risk for a wide range of problems.

Labels: parental_involvement, laws, teenagers, alcohol_abuse

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Drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes is a deadly combination. In fact, it is the most preventable cause of death worldwide, according to the World Health Association.

Now a new study from University of Queensland in Australia found that the combination may actually change the structure of cells in a portion of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. The two drugs enhance the addictive qualities of one another, according to Professor Traute Flatscher-Bader.

Dr. Flatscher-Bader analyzed brain tissue from deceased people who had smoked, drank alcohol, or did a combination of the two. The ones who used the combination showed changes in the nucleus accumbens, a pleasure center in the brain.

The study appears in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
 

Labels: tobacco use, alcohol_abuse

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 2 Comments

A new survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) has found that the presence of gangs and drugs is increasing in U.S. high schools. Gang participation has long been associated with increased risk of teen drug and alcohol abuse.

“According to the report, 66 percent of high school students said their schools were drug-infected, a steep increase from last year when 51 percent said their schools had drugs. In the newest survey, one in three middle-schoolers say drugs are used, kept, or sold at their school. Last year, 23 percent of children in middle school said they had drugs in their school.” [Source: CNN]

The report also found that kids who attend schools where both drugs and gangs are present were five times more likely to smoke marijuana, and almost five times more likely know someone who uses cocaine or other hard drugs. The study’s authors offered no explanation for the sudden increases.

Labels: drug_use, alcohol_abuse, gangs

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 2 Comments

A study of 800 young people ages ten to 24 years old found that those from low income backgrounds were twice as likely to say that they had sex by age 11 , and more likely to say they were involved in criminal activities by age 10.

Middle-class youth were 1.5 times more likely to say they had abused alcohol by age ten years.

No one is sure if low income participants in the study were more likely to get into risky behaviors in early ages or simply more likely to admit to doing them.

However, those children in the study who had gotten involved at very young ages with unprotected sex, delinquency, and alcohol were more likely to be involved in crime, alcohol abuse, and risky sex as young adults.

"Crime, alcohol use disorders, and risky sex are common among young adults, especially those from low income backgrounds. These problems are costly to address, and they decrease the health and well-being of young people, and usually began during young adolescence," according to lead author W. Alex Mason.

The study appears in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
 

Labels: sex, juvenile crime, alcohol_abuse

Posted By: CRC Health 0 Comments

Mentally ill people do not commit more crimes than anyone else. However, they are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and substance abusers commit more violent crime, according to a new study from Europe.

• Dr. Seena Fazel analyzed records that went back thirty years of 8,000 people with schizophrenia and 3700 who have bipolar disorder.
• All participants lived in Sweden.
• The main finding of the study was "the relationship between violent crime and serious mental illness can be explained by alcohol and substance abuse. If you take away the substance abuse, the contribution of the illness itself is minimal."

People with mental illness who abuse substances have crime rates six to seven times higher than the general population. However, this rate is the same for all substance abusers.

"It's probably more dangerous walking outside a pub on a late night than walking outside a hospital where patients have been released," said Dr. Fazel, a lecturer and psychiatrist at the University of Oxford in Great Britain.

This study appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Labels: violence, mental_health, drug_use, substance_abuse, alcohol_abuse

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 1 Comment

A middle school student in Lee County, Mississippi, has undertaken an innovative initiative to help prevent underage drinking in her community.

In a Dec. 31 article in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal , writer Danza Johnson described the alcohol abuse prevention efforts of Kateland Kennedy:

Even though the Mooreville Middle School student is only 12 years old, Kateland has a very grownup message for her friends.

"Drinking as a teenager can ruin your life," she said. "It's wrong for adults to give alcohol to teenagers so we decided to do the Sticker Shock Campaign to warn teens and remind store clerks that selling alcohol to a kid is wrong and against the law."

Kateland and about 10 friends will put stickers that read: "It's illegal to buy or provide alcohol to anyone under the age of 21," on the containers of every alcohol beverage at the selected stores.

Region III Mental Health Center and the Lee County Sheriff's Department have teamed up with Kateland to get the word out. Sheriff Jim Johnson said it's one thing to have him or other adults telling teens not to drink, but it doesn't hold nearly the weight as hearing it come from one of their own.

 

Labels: prevention, alcohol_abuse, middle_school

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