Blog: Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

Whoa. My brain is full.
I just finished watching, "Brain Science as a Means of Understanding Delinquency and Substance Abuse in Youth," a video you can watch online or download to your computer. It records two faculty lectures given at the University of Washington in 2006. The video's about 75 minutes long, but I assure you, it's worth watching. 

• Interested in what restorative justice looks like when it's implemented in juvenile court? Here's a long article about two restorative justice programs in Oakland: one uses a peer court to address low-level offenders; the other works with kids leaving detention after many months.
• Want data on the well-being of kids in your state? Want to know how your state ranks compared with others? Check out the KIDS COUNT Data Center just launched by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which also released its KIDS COUNT Databook for 2009.

[This post was written by Ashley Edwards, Kelly Graves, and Claretta Witherspoon, of the Reclaiming Futures site in Guilford County, NC.]
North Carolina’s Action for Children recently released the 2009 Youth Delinquency Prevention Report Card.  The release of these data will inform service delivery and outreach to adolescents throughout the state, and can be instrumental in helping us advocate for continued investment and expansion of the Reclaiming Futures program. 

• Children and Juvenile Justice: Proposals for Improvements is the title of a new report from the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights. (If that interests you, you might also want to see this 2007 summary of trends in juvenile justice systems across 15 countries.)
• 13 Myths and Facts about Drug Abuse and Treatment - an excellent short document from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

• Teens in the juvenile justice system are more likely to commit crimes as adults because delinquent behavior is "contagious", according to a 20-year research project in Canada. The solutions? More investments in prevention programs for pre-adolescents, and ending the practice of grouping delinquent youth together in services designed to help them. (No advice on how to accomplish the latter item.)
  • UPDATE Feb. 2, 2011: A&E's recent reality TV show, "Beyond Scared Straight," actually increases teens' contact with adult prison inmates in an attempt to terrify them into “going straight." Maybe the producer's didn't read the above study, which indicates that contact with the justice system increases teen recidivism. Check out these facts about the program from the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ).

"Guys like me don't make it."
That's how the arresting introductory video on the Connecticut Turning to Youth and Families (CTYF) website begins. And what the young man means is that no one expected him to make it. But in spite of his own addiction, he found a way through. (July 15, 2009 update: a different video now greets new visitors to the CTYF site. The video pictured above is here.)

Suppose you provide alcohol and drug treatment to teens.
What do you do if the mother of an adolescent patient is demanding to see her son’s treatment records, but the son doesn't want your program to discuss his treatment with his mother or to share any records with her?
How do you deal with the relapse of a young teen-age patient? Can your program contact the patient's parents?  Must you?

• A St. Louis family court judge has taken the unusual step of opening his own alternative school for youth in the justice system. The school features lots of oversight and plenty of after-school activities.  
• The families of kids detained in San Francisco won't be charged after all. The city's head of juvenile probation has withdrawn the original proposal to collect fees for detained teens. He stated that only families of youth from outside the city (an estimated 30% of detained youth) would have been charged.

Is drug use among high school-age teens about to soar? Probably, according to an analysis of historical data performed by Carnevale Associates, LLC.
The analysis, which appears in the firm’s policy brief, “Could Youth Drug Use Be Making a Comeback?,” shows that shortly after youth fear and disapproval of marijuana use diminished in the 1990s, teen marijuana use jumped over 30 percentage points between 1992 and 1997. After youth attitudes reversed, teen marijuana use dropped dramatically, falling 29 percent before bottoming out in 2006.