Review of Theories of Adolescent Drug Use |
 |
| This article presents a review of the most prominent theories of adolescent drug use and offer a framework for organizing this information. They select theories that explain experimental substance use. They examine what characteristics and circumstances lead adolescents to experiment with substances. They do not examine factors that may influence regular use, dependence, or problem use. This purpose of their review is to provide a framework for understanding substance use to help program developers, researchers, and practitioners become more effective at preventing experimental substance use. |
 |
| The most popular theories of substance abuse prevention were sorted into five categories. Cognitive-Affective Theories. These theories consider how adolescents' beliefs about the consequences of experimenting with specific substances contribute to their decisions to use those substances. Interventions that use this theoretical approach focus on increasing adolescents' beliefs about negative consequences of using drugs, highlighting the benefits of not using drugs, and correcting inflated estimates or perceptions of drug use. Social Learning Theories. Theories in this category assume that adolescents acquire their beliefs about substance use and other delinquent behaviors from their role models, friends, and parents. From this perspective, it is important to provide adolescents with positive role models, and to teach them refusal skills and the belief that they can resist drugs. Conventional Commitment and Social Attachment Theories. These theories assume that the emotional attachments adolescents have with peers who use substances is the cause of substance use. They target improving bonds between adolescents and positive peer groups and prosocial institutions. Such groups have norms that discourage them from engaging in deviant behavior. Interventions focus on improving adolescents' academic and career skills, providing them with career opportunities, and teaching parents how to socialize and reinforce their children. Intrapersonal Theories. These theories examine how adolescents' personality characteristics, emotions, and behavioral skills contribute to their substance use. Examples include stress at school, self-esteem, social interaction skills, coping skills, and emotional distress. Interventions target many of these individual characteristics of children rather than focusing on their beliefs about specific drugs and behaviors. Comprehensive Theories. Comprehensive theories combine components from all of the other theories. They attempt to account for how adolescents' biology, personality, relationships with peers and parents, and culture or environment interact to cause drug use. |
 |
| Before selecting an approach, practitioners should consider the following: The predominant influence in an adolescent's life. Practitioners may wish to answer the following questions to help them determine how to address social influences.
The level of influence for explaining substance use in a particular situation. At the most basic level, practitioners should consider adolescents' intentions, decisions, and behavior as the primary predictors of whether adolescents will use drugs. Practitioners should also consider indirect causes of behavior, such as whom adolescents' role models are and how adolescents are connected to peers and social groups. Practitioners should consider how factors that are beyond adolescents' control (e.g., neighborhood crime, parental divorce, etc.) might influence the chances of success for prevention approaches that are being considered. |
 |
| Petraitis, J., and Flay, B.R. Reviewing theories of adolescent substance use: Organizing pieces in the puzzle. Psychological Bulletin, 117(1): 67-86, 1995. |
 |
| Researcher's Email Address: afjmp@UAA.ALASKA.EDU |
| Researcher's Home Page: |
Click here to search other Tanglewood Research Knowledge Base Articles. |