Substance Abuse Among Teens

Tim Walker also argued “In 2014, the University of Minnesota released a study that examined data from more than 9,000 students attending eight high schools in three states. The study found that attendance and academic performance in math, English, science and social studies improved at schools with later start times, while tardiness, substance abuse, and symptoms of depression declined. (1) In schools that start later start times across all subjects the students grades were improved. Students at the schools that started earlier were using drugs more and being late to class. Starting schools later is more beneficial than starting earlier.

Drug and alcohol addiction is a chronic disease in the brain. It's a common relapsing brain disease that causes drug/alcohol seeking and use. This addiction can lead to health problems and can affect your safety, and your future. This has been known as a big problem for teens, buh they are offered little help due to the environment they are in or hiding their addiction from their loved ones. As a conclusion, there are many reasons why teens use drugs but their are also many ways to help them stop.

The article “Later start time for teens improves grades, mood, and safety” addresses the topic for teens to have later start times. “The evidence shows that the later the start time, the greater the academic benefits” (Wahlstrom 2016, pg 2). The author has strong arguments concluding the medical research, schools actually participating in later start times, academic outcomes, and health/activity outcome. School starting times being later could be more effective for students in their health and scholastic purposes.

In the website Pros and Cons of Later School Start Times it says “In fact, AAA says that drowsiness contributes to more than 100,000 crashes per year” that shows that if schools started later, the amount of crashes per year would decrease by over 100,000 saving many lives.

The existence of a myriad of social problems among teenagers that both parents and states have to deal with is a factor whose weight ought not to be treated lightly. The increasing level of drug use among the adolescents constitutes one of the ever increasing situations in the society and may, as a matter of fact, be a representation other underlying issues. The level of the situation in the contemporary world, though not discussed as much as it ought to be, has reached alarming levels. There seems to be an increasing predisposition among the use to take the drugs as it's reflected in the escalating trends of drug abuse among this generation of individuals (spooner, 1999). The ever deteriorating levels of this situation coupled with the widespread permissiveness in the society and the absence of attention from appropriate caregivers at different institutions only means that the need to address the problem is paramount. Different avenues of solutions can be applied in reducing the level of the problem and averting the massive negative consequences that come with the phenomena. Dealing with this issue is not a matter of instance as the different parameters of the problems, its causes and possible workable solutions have to be discovered. As such, research on these dynamics is a mandatory undertaking.

Studies have also shown that from shifting the school day to start later in the morning resulted in a boost in attendance, test scores, and grades in FOUR of the major subjects increased. Which is very important in a student’s life because they need to learn how big of a role attendance plays in everyday life, it also shows students what they are capable of in school, which make students more confident to go to college. It also showed a decrease in tardiness, substance abuse, and symptoms of depression. This is important because if a teen starts abusing substances at a young age there is high chance that they will continue to abuse them later on in life. And some even showed a dramatic decrease in teen car accidents. Also if teen feel rushed they think they have to drive fast to get to school on time, which highly increase crash rates among

Later High school start times are also linked to teen car accident remarkably dropping. In the article, researchers found that a simple way to reduce car crashes was to “Start the High School Day later”, it was evaluated that in counties where school started early, there were more run-off the road crashes among teens. According to Palus, “They suspect that these might be directly due to sleep deprivation.This reveals that early school start times are a problem and school systems around the country should take a look at the data and consider whether they should delay them. The article also states that “researchers looked at two towns that were pretty much identical-except for the time that teens were expected to arrive at school. In one county,

Hannah is a fifteen year old girl who was recently sent to a rehabilitation center for the result of abuse of prescription medication. 6.1 million high school students currently use addictive substances, and like Hannah, 1 in 3 of them are addicted (“National Study Reveals,”2011). Although the number of teens using these drugs are decreasing, the numbers are still dangerously high. Due to it’s high risk of addiction, dangerous consequences, and growing availability, substance abuse among teenagers is a serious trend being presented among all United States adolescence.

Recent research says that if school started just 20 minuets later than students would get more sleep, attend school more often,make less trips to the nurse, and for the older students that can drive less fatal car crashes. Many teens have sleep deprivation, teens naturally stay up late and sleep in late.To keep children safe and stop depriveing them of sleep we must start school later.

Substances abuse on today’s teens has become one of the main problems in the United State Society. Even though the Juvenile Department Center has create different programs and campaigns to help lower the rate of juveniles abusing substances, it seems hopeless. Now, this problem has directly affected Jane, who’s her son (which is a teen) has become involved with abusing three different substances. To be specific, Jane’s son has been abusing Percocet’s, Alcohol, and Marijuana. Jane has ask this author to provide her with facts in order to help her comprehend and help his son with the problem he has got himself into. Therefore, this paper will explain three things: explain the effects these three substances (Percocet’s, alcohol, marijuana) have on her sons, explain which drugs are addictive and what this means for treatment, and offer her the best treatment option/s for her son.

Substance use and abuse is a definitely a public health problem among American children and adolescents. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, substance abuse is the excessive use of a drug or the use of a drug without medical justification. There are various different substances that adolescents are abusing. Alcohol is the most abused in adolescence with four in ten high school seniors consuming some type of alcoholic beverage in the past month and more than one in five engaging in binge drinking in the past two weeks. Tobacco is not much of an issue as it was in the past with the rates declining. Only one in ten adolescents have reported smoking in the past month. Illicit drug use is a growing problem in the US. By the twelfth grade, nearly half of all students have tried illicit drugs with marijuana being the most used but also include prescription drug use and aerosols (The Office of Adolescent Health, 2014)

In a world filled with violence and traumatic events, young adults are the most vulnerable to them. We see a trend in students hanging out with the wrong crowd digging a deeper hole for themselves; getting involved with drugs, alcohol, and eventually becoming dependent and addicted to them. In discussions of substance abuse and the external factors affecting teenage youth, I believe that parents, society, age, and peers are main factors that contribute to a teenagers ' drug addiction.

The abuse of alcohol and other substances has been an ongoing global epidemic amongst individuals of all ages, but mostly adolescents. This paper discusses the risk factors that an adolescent faces that end up pushing them to opioid use and addiction. It is a review of studies done in the past 5 years (2009-2014) on how big an impact domestic factors can have on an individual’s life. The various types of factors will be discussed, the affect a family members drug use can have on the rest of the household, how the closeness of a relationships within the family can impact the drug use, and the different types of drugs that can be obtained. It will also review the correlation between substance abuse and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The national sleep epidemic that has taken the world by storm is also taking a toll in not only teen’s health but also their performance in school as well as personal safety. The sleep deprivation that teens are experiencing everyday has caused many health problems as well as academic problems. I believe starting school later will hinder this ever growing teen sleep deprivation problem we face today. Letting teens sleep later is beneficial to their learning capacity as their heightened alertness improved their classroom performance as well as better memory and many other crucial achievements. So probably starting school later, but no later than eight thirty am, will lead students to perform better in school and their health will improve drastically.

Addictive behavior may lead to addiction and when we see people with addictive substances; sometimes it is easy to emulate that behavior. According to learning theory, addictions is basically a learned behavior. For example, people learn many of their addictive behaviors through what is called classical conditioning. Furthermore, people always pair up environmental cues with addictive substances. Fortunately, many addictions can be “unlearned” and we can do this by counter-conditioning. Counter –conditioning is a type of classical conditioning and we do this by doing something called taste aversion (dislike of a specific taste). Taste aversion functions in the same was as food aversion; we pair something that provides good stimuli and within seconds a bad stimuli. Some of the problems that involved teenagers are alcohol, abuse, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancy. Many of these problems are caused by stressful events or peer pressure. Alcohol and drugs use disorders an individual’s life and have the potential to harm other in the process.