Among Children and Adolescents

Nowhere are the tragic consequences of substance exposure and abuse in our society more evident than among children and adolescents. It is the responsibility of healers, educators, and policymakers alike to learn as much as possible about the latest trends in substance exposure and use among children and adolescents: its causes, effects, prevention, and treatment. This book provides a unique opportunity to do just that.

Substance Use among Children and Adolescents provides the most complete picture yet of important theoretical, empirical, and clinical trends in substance exposure and use and their impact upon the young. Ann Marie and Louis Pagliaro have assembled a vast body of information in a format that is easy to apply in clinical practice. Drawing upon their own clinical experiences and those of other experts from a variety of disciplines, the authors present practical advice and guidance on assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Practitioners will be particularly interested in those chapters dealing with assessment and treatment approaches and the use of the Mega Interactive Model of Substance Exposure and Use among Infants, Children, and Adolescents.

Among the many crucial topics covered in depth are prenatal exposure to substances of abuse; patterns of substance exposure and use among infants, children, and adolescents; the effects of substance exposure and use on learning and memory; the relationship between substance exposure and use and various psychiatric disorders; violence, sexual abuse, and crime; contributing social and psychological factors such as divorce, cults, familial patterns of substance use, and suicide; the advantages and pitfalls of various prevention strategies; methods of clinically assessing the nature and extent of substance use; and the relative efficacy of current treatment methods. The book's helpful appendices provide abbreviations used in the text, a directory of major treatment centers, and generic, trade, and common names of frequently used substances of abuse.

An exhaustive reference and a valuable practical guide, Substance Use among Children and Adolescents belongs in the working libraries of child and adolescent clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, school psychologists and counselors, social workers, and all those with a professional interest in one of today's gravest social problems.

"Substance use among children and adolescents in North America, often viewed as part of the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood (at least for boys), is invariably accompanied by significant concern on the part of parents, teachers, researchers, and policymakers. Public concern about substance use among adolescents is not new, and several patterns of concern regarding the use of various substances of abuse over the modern period have been noted. For example, marijuana use during the 1920s (Prohibition era) was cause for alarm in many states and provinces, as was heroin use during the 1950s in New York City and other North American cities. The use of psychedelics by the flower children in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, and elsewhere, during the 1960s and 1970s occasioned much public outcry, as did alcohol, nicotine, and cocaine use among children and adolescents during the 1980s. The 1990s have been characterized by worries about crack cocaine and polysubstance use among girls and boys from all socioeconomic groups living in rural and urban regions of North America. More recently, attention has been directed at the relationship between substance use and the apparent rising incidence of violent crime. In fact, homicide has become the leading cause of death for young black males and suicide for young white males."--From Substance Use among Children and Adolescents