NIH Launches Landmark Study on Substance Use and Adolescent Brain Development
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded 13 grants to research institutions around the country as part of a landmark study about the effects of adolescent substance use on the developing brain. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study will follow approximately 10,000 children beginning at ages 9 to10, before they initiate drug use, through the period of highest risk for substance use and other mental health disorders. Scientists will track exposure to substances (including nicotine, alcohol, and marijuana), academic achievement, cognitive skills, mental health, and brain structure and function using advanced research methods. Click HERE for more in this…
CADCA Launches Prevent Rx Abuse Online Toolkit
CADCA’s Online Rx Abuse Prevention Toolkit contains facts, strategies and tools to prevent and reduce teen Rx medicine abuse in your community. This newly revised toolkit is based on CADCA’s Seven Strategies for Effective Community Change. Incorporating these strategies will help you formulate, modify and implement your prevention and intervention strategies. Click on the image to check it out!
Substance Abuse Prevention Is Suicide Prevention
Many of the factors that increase the risk for substance abuse, such as traumatic experiences, also increase the risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and substance abuse, like mental health problems, is linked with a several-fold increase in suicide risk. Drug poisoning deaths have increased 120 percent in recent years – from 17,415 in 2000 to 38,329 in 2010. The majority (58 percent) of the drug deaths involved pharmaceuticals, and 75 percent of those deaths involved prescription pain relievers. In 2010, U.S. emergency departments treated 202,000 suicide attempts in which prescription drugs were used as the means, 33,000 of which…
New App: Mobile MORE (My Ongoing Recovery Experience)
Hazelden Foundation announced as winner of the Behavioral Health Patient Empowerment Challenge for creating the Mobile MORE smartphone app, designed to assists persons through one year of recovery. Click here for more information about this app
Connection Between Adolescent Substance Use and the Risk for Dropout
Experts at the Institute for Behavior and Health, Inc. (IBH) and the Center on Young Adult Health and Development (CYAHD) at the University of Maryland School of Public Health investigated the connection between adolescent substance use and the risk for dropout in the U.S. There is compelling evidence that the association of academic difficulties and substance use is bidirectional. In some individuals, academic difficulties precede the onset of substance use, and in those cases, a vicious cycle can ensue—leading to even more severe academic difficulties and eventual dropout. In other cases, even controlling for individual background characteristics, substance use precedes…
Family Physicians Group Offers Doctors Online Tools for Addiction Treatment
The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) in cooperation with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is offering its members online tools to help them care for patients and families struggling with addiction. The tools include the Addiction Performance Project, designed to reduce the stigma often associated with addiction, and to help doctors better identify and assist patients who abuse drugs.
Anti-smoking medication shows promise for treating alcohol dependence
A smoking-cessation medication may be a viable option for the treatment of alcohol dependence, according to a study by scientists at the National Institutes of Health. The study found that varenicline (marketed under the name Chantix), approved in 2006 to help people stop smoking, significantly reduced alcohol consumption and craving among people who are alcohol-dependent. The findings were published online in the Journal of Addiction Medicine. Continue reading…
Kids Who First Drink During Puberty…
New research shows that youths who first drink during puberty are at greater risk for developing later alcohol problems. “Most teenagers have their first alcoholic drink during puberty. However, most research on the risks of early-onset alcohol use up to now has not focused on the pubertal stage during which the first alcoholic drink is consumed,” said Miriam Schneider, Ph.D., a researcher at the Central Institute of Mental Health, University of Heidelberg, and one of the authors of the new study. Click here for full story…
Parents’ Deployment May Increase Risk of Kids’ Substance Abuse
Researchers from the University of Iowa evaluated data from 2010, when 1.2 million American children had a parent in the active duty military. Study results suggest parent’s deployment may increase risk of substance abuse in preteen and teens. “We worry a lot about the service men and women and we sometimes forget that they are not the only ones put into harm’s way by deployment—their families are affected, too,” senior study author Stephan Arndt, PhD, said in a news release. “Our findings suggest we need to provide these families with more community support.”