Here is an essential volume for educators, social workers, health care professionals, and parents who are frustrated by the consuming power of drugs over the lives of young people and looking for answers to this enormous problem. In this unique and highly practical volume, experts concentrate on the family--the foundation of mental health and social control--as the most positive force in the prevention of adolescent drug use. Despite the “war on drugs,” young people in large numbers continue to use substances. This instructive guide focuses on educating and strengthening families--which makes stronger children who are less likely to use drugs--instead of the traditional efforts based on rehabilitation instead of prevention. It offers instructive background information about societal forces that affect families and make it difficult to raise drug-free youngsters. Family differences are discussed, such as family structure, parenting styles, ethnic and cultural characteristics. Contributors thoroughly examine practical, effective interventions--at home, at school, and with peers--that are positive rather than negative, instructional rather than punitive, and preventive instead of remedial.
- I. Adolescent Drug Use: A Family Problem
- The Institutionalization of Drug Use in America: Hazardous Adolescence, Challenging Parenthood
- Family Theory and Research on Adolescent Drug Use: A Review
- II. Family Styles, Stages, and Varieties
- Contrasting Family Patterns of Adolescent Drug Users and Nonusers
- Developmental Stages in Drug Use: Changing Family Involvements
- Ethnic Family Differences in Adolescent Substance Use
- Personality, Family, and Ecological Influences on Adolescent Drug Use: A Developmental Analysis
- Families With Attention Deficit Disordered Children and Others at Risk
- III. Family Interventions
- Empirical Guidelines for a Family Intervention for Adolescent Drug Use
- Managing Adolescent Behaviors at School: Implications for Families
- Peer Relationships, Social Competence, and Substance Abuse Prevention: Implications for the Family
Biography
Robert H. Coombs Professor of Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine is trained as a sociologist (doctorate), counseling psychologist (Masters), family therapist (California licensed) and group psychotherapist (nationally certified). He has published 14 books and more than 175 other manuscripts. Professor Coombs teaches courses on addiction at UCLA where he received the Award for Excellence in Education from the School of Medicine and the Distinguished Faculty Educator Award from the Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital.
