Adolescent Substance Abuse

Catalog description

This course is designed for individuals who want to learn more about the evidence-based prevention approaches for addressing substance abuse among children and adolescents, as well as strategies for creating a school environment that emphasizes positive activities and responsibility among students, teachers, administrators and encourages parent-family involvement. Whether young people use alcohol and other drugs in an effort to self-medicate for depression and/or anxiety, or they use because of the curiosity a peer might say about how a drug makes them feel; repeated substance use causes changes to the developing brain. <BR><BR>The purpose of this course is to investigate current research on adolescent substance abuse and to better understand it as a treatable brain disease. Participants will learn strategies to prevent and make referral for this growing epidemic. A young person may recover quickly from a single or occasional use of a drug, but repeated use often results in brain changes that are long lasting, especially when considering that judgment and comprehension areas in the brain do not fully develop completely until the early 20s.