Substance Abuse : An Individual 's Life

When you are placing a child in a foster home, it tends to be for the reason that the child was originally not in a good home. Their home with their biological parents could have been with drugs and alcohol. Their parents could have been drug dealers or constant drinkers or smokers. The parents may not have been able to afford the child. Being placed in

According to the Diagnostic Statistic Manual 5 (DSM-5) substance use disorder is when the individual has a dependency on alcohol or drug, followed by penetrating craving and antisocial behavior to acquire the substance. The terms substance abuse and substance dependence refer to substance use disorder, which has been separated into three classifications as follows

It is imperative to know what the actual facts are. “Studies have shown that adverse childhood experiences, including abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and household substance abuse, increase the likelihood of early initiation of drug use by two to four times” (Dube, Felitti, Dong, Chapman, Giles, & Anda, 2003). “Interviews with 320 adolescents in foster care found approximately 40% used alcohol, 35% reported marijuana use, and 25% described using both in the prior six months (Thompson & Auslander, 2007). “Youths who have been in foster care used illicit drugs at a higher rate than youths who have never been in foster care, but they were also more likely to have received treatment” (National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2005).

Growing up in the household under substances influence can cause severe damage to the child. Parental substance abuse has a significant impact on family function, and it may also contribute to child maltreatment. It heightens the risks to both of the physical and emotional safety of the children, and it generates children’s problematic outcomes. Children who grow up in such families may also experience mental health issues, social isolation, financial difficulties, and exposure to stressful life events and so on.

Thousands of children each year are removed from households of drug addiction and put into the foster care system, which has overwhelming numbers of children experiencing both psychological traumatic damage and feelings of worthlessness. In Montana alone, the number of children in foster care has doubled since 2010, and in Georgia, it has increased by 80 percent. Despite the immense amount of effort being put in by child welfare agencies to place these children in suitable homes, there is simply not enough foster families to meet the continuously growing demand of homes needed. With a severe lack of options available for these children, many are shipped to prison-like institutions, bounce amongst multiple homes, and are frequently left with feelings of abandonment, which has disrupted education and severed positive influences within their lives. According to the article “The Opioid Plague’s Youngest Victims: Children in Foster Care”, published by the New York Times, “Children who have been in foster care are five times more likely to abuse drugs”. The Opioid Crisis itself has expanded and developed into an American foster care crisis as well. The ultimate goal of these systems is to reunite foster children with their biological parents, but that is becoming an increasingly slim reality as relapse in parents increases and more and more children are sent into the foster care system. It is also not uncommon for these children being ripped away from their drug influenced homes to suffer behavioral problems that need to be properly treated with therapy, which is yet another unattainable factor due to the underwhelming amounts of suitable families willing to take in these suffering children. Those families who have been able to host children coming from drug dependent homes have categorized that a majority of them are suffering

Substance abuse is a very widely known public epidemic in today's society. Many people are unfortunately plagued by this issue. According to Emedicinehealth.com (2012), “People abuse substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs for varied and complicated reasons, but it is clear that our society pays a significant cost,” (para. 1). People that are affected by substance abuse includes a very different range of people. Many that abuse the substances end up having health-related problems which in turn increases the need for health care. Other people that are affected by substance abuse are the family members and friends of the abusers because they have to deal with the person abusing the substances. Things that can be abused are

Substance abuse is the habitual use of mind altering substances (Substances). Addicts have a false or altered look on reality; they need help seeing what is wrong with the life style they are living. Nikki Sixx once said,” Addiction- When you can give something up at any time, as long as it’s next Tuesday!” Recovery is teaching a person to break old habits. Substance abuse counselors are very important, not only in the mental health field, but in society as well.

Another reason why problems develop as children end up in a new foster house is the increasing use to drugs like crack cocaine and alcohol. What’s more, because

For example, Vaughn, Ollie, McMillen, Scott, and Munson (2007) conducted a study in regards to the prevalence and predictors of current and lifetime substance use, substance abuse disorder, as well as polysubstance use among older youth in foster care. The sample consisted of four hundred and six 17-year old youths in the foster care system (Vaughn et al., 2007). The results of the study showed that 45% of the youth used alcohol or illicit drugs within the last six months (Vaughn et al., 2007). At the same time, 49% had tried drugs sometime during their lifetime and 35% met criteria for a substance use disorder (Vaughn et al., 2007). Vaughn et al. (2007) also discovered that youth in independent living situations, and youth with a diagnosis of Conduct Disorder or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), were more at risk of developing substance use and substance abuse

Have you ever seen a homeless child, sitting on the edge of the road, who is too modest to ask or take, money or clothes from anyone, and just thought to yourself, “somebody out there should take this child in?” Chances are that one of you in this room has seen that, because one out of every thirty kids in the United States falls under this unfortunate category. As this independent study rises, the amount of foster parents meeting proper qualifications continues to decrease by around five percent every year (Martha White: “One in Thirty”). Whatever your view on this is, the contradiction of those two statistics can be traced back to about eighty percent of all foster families have had or currently do have an issue with substance abuse (“Facts

Case Vignette Analyzing the biological domain, JL is 37 years of age. She is an Anglo American female who is in the middle class. JL lives in a sober living home and wears a cast due to an injury she had on her leg two months ago. She stated her injury is under control and does not require medical attention at the moment. JL has been residing in a recovery home after giving birth to her first child; her child was born with drugs in his system.

Along with illegal behavior often a substance abuser will find themselves as homeless, spending their paychecks on their habits of using substances (Tracy, 2005). Children of abusers are affected by both possessing negative role models that set the example that drug use is not wrong and sometimes the children are placed into the care of the community because of neglect and abuse by the substance user (National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Adolescent and School Health [CDC], 2009). Other medical, social, and economic issues also are being experienced from substance abuse and use.

In a study of 166 mothers across seven years in both multidimensional treatment foster care and group home settings, Leve, Kerr, and Harold (2013) found that girls who became pregnant during foster care were more likely to experience various health problems. There was a significant correlation between becoming pregnant during the first two years of the study and using illicit drugs other than marijuana. In addition, a pregnancy was more likely to result in a miscarriage if it occurred within the first two years of the study. The type of placement did not have a significant effect on the rates of drug use or miscarriage (Leve, Kerr, & Harold, 2013), indicating that the only way to reduce negative health outcomes among girls in foster care may be to prevent pregnancy in the first place. It is particularly difficult to reduce pregnancy rates in this population, because teens in foster care are much more likely to become pregnant than teens in the general population. For example, 34.2 out of every thousand girls aged 15 through 19 became pregnant in 2010, compared to an average of 28.1 out of every hundred girls in a study of 17 year old fosters in California (Putnam-Hornstein & King, 2013). Furthermore, one birth during teenage years puts a foster child at risk for another. In one study, almost one in three foster children who

Addicted parents spend a significant amount of time searching for drugs or alcohol and must spend time to obtain money to pay for their “fixes” whether by illegal or legal means. They have to have time to recover from hangovers or withdrawal symptoms. This constant cycle of obtaining, using and coming down from drugs leaves little time left over for their children. Social systems are overwhelmed by the number of children which need care from someone other than their addicted parents. Approximately, eighty percent of the children who enter foster care come from homes of addicted parents (Taylor 2011). Their stay in foster care is lengthened by the need for their parents to meet judicial rehabilitation requirements before being returned to their homes. In addition, these children having come from non-supportive and abusive environments require foster parents who are able to cope with issues of behavioral

Children can be subjected to the negative effects of parental substance use in a variety of different ways. For example, substance use during pregancy can cause detrimental outcomes for newborn infants by placing them at a higher risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), being born with birth defects, developing behavioral and developmental delays, being born premature, etc. Children with addicted parents, are placed at a higher risk of: lacking appropriate supervision; lacking basic needs such as: food, clothing, housing, and medical care; exposure to violence; developing substance abuse issues themselves.