Thesis Statement
Substance abuse represents a significant public health challenge among the youth, and this can be reduced or prevented by employing the role of institutions such as schools, families, communities, and peers, thus helping to prevent long-term substance abuse.
Annotated Bibliography
Wen, M. (2017). Social Capital and Adolescent Substance Use: The Role of Family, School, and Neighborhood Contexts. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 27(2), 362–378. Web.
The author of this article, Wen, assesses the link between social capital factors of norm-setting social arenas like school, family units, the neighborhood, and adolescent substance use, which are determined by alcohol consumption, illicit drug use, and cigarette smoking among a sample of youths in California. This research was successfully conducted and partly funded by a grant from the Primary Children’s Medical Centre Foundation. He used the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research data and the program assistance.
The results found were that adolescent substance abuse behavior is associated with socialization processes at different life stages and in varying degrees. The family was found to be the most influential setting that should be looked into for youth substance use prevention. The family social resource found to be the most protective of substance abuse is parental monitoring among adolescents.
The main advantage of this information is that it also gives and discusses in-depth details on the implications of family-based interventions. The article also compares the influence of school and neighborhood factors and family, and it discusses that family is the most influential factor in youths’ substance use. This calls for further research to explore the family resources in this area more thoroughly.
Having information that the family unit is the most influential among these factors, it is now easier to further research and obtain precise results, which can help summarize and present clear data that can be used to control the family factors that increase or elevate the rate of substance use among youths. This information served as a great starting point. It will be a valuable tool in my research paper and future studies, as it provides relevant insights into the role of institutions in youth substance use.
Lardier Jr, D. T., Barrios, V. R., Garcia-Reid, P., & Reid, R. J. (2018). Preventing Substance Use Among Hispanic Urban Youth: Valuing the Role of Family, Social Support Networks, School Importance, and Community Engagement. Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse, 27(5-6), 251-263. Web.
The authors Lardier et al. discuss how Hispanic youths are the ones who are vulnerable and experience high levels of violence, access to drugs and alcohol, limited access to educational institutions, and disproportionate use of harmful substances. This research success was significantly contributed to by funding from the Drug-Free Communities Grant Initiative, administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The authors say that those youths who are more exposed to various sources of support, such as family-related values and also positive social networks, are less prone to substance use than those who are less exposed to such support.
The study that was carried out recently examined substance use and empowering various protective resources among a cohort of Hispanic students from the Northeastern United States urban community. They also assessed the moderating influence of gender using structural equation modeling (SEM) multigroup path analysis techniques, and the results obtained indicated that increased access to sociocultural resources, such as social support, enhances Hispanic adolescent community participation and school importance. The results also clearly indicated that gender has a positive but diverging effect on adolescent participation in community and school activities.
The main advantage of this article is that it extensively discusses the implications for community prevention, providing the reader with a better understanding of the role of institutions in shaping youths’ values and a way to involve them in reducing substance abuse among their peers. This information will be an excellent tool for my research as it indicates the role of institutions in preventing substance use among Hispanic youths. Knowing that more exposure to support systems increases youths’ participation and school activities will help researchers in developing a viable solution that will help increase youth participation, thus reducing the youth’s exposure to substance abuse.
Moon, S. S., Kim, Y. J., & Parrish, D. (2020). Understanding the Linkages Between Parental Monitoring, School Academic Engagement, Substance Use, and Suicide Among Adolescents in the US. In Child & Youth Care Forum (Vol. 49, No. 6, pp. 953–968). Springer US. Web.
In this article, Moon et al. discuss the causes of death. They say that suicide is the second leading cause of death among many youths and young adults. They say that one method of this prevention would be improving the general understanding of the socio-ecological factors associated with the behavior of youth suicide. This study aimed to test whether parenting, monitoring, and school academic engagement predict suicidal behaviors and substance use in youth, and also by gender.
They utilized data from the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an extensive cross-sectional study that included US adolescents. They also used a structural equation model and the Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes model to test the proposed conceptual model using AMOS Version 25. The results found indicated that there is a clear relationship between suicidal behavior and relational, community, and individual social-ecological factors.
The main advantage of this article is that it suggests important prevention targets for reducing the number of suicides and the risk of suicide among youths and adolescents. The main limitation of this research is that the results only represent a small number of adolescents and therefore cannot be generalized. This calls for further studies and more experiments from other samples for youths across other regions, so that it can provide precise data on the suicide rates of adolescents worldwide.
Although this information will not be the sole basis of my research, it will serve as an excellent tool for further investigation. It has provided detailed information from the research experiment, results, analysis, and conclusion of the study, and this is a good starting point, as death is a serious public health problem in the United States among the youth, and this needs to be looked into to help solve the problem and reduce the suicide rates.
Zuckermann, A. M., Williams, G. C., Battista, K., Jiang, Y., de Groh, M., & Leatherdale, S. T. (2020). Prevalence and Correlates of Youth Polysubstance Use in the COMPASS Study. Addictive Behaviors, 107. Web.
The authors of this article, Zuckermann et al., investigate the increased use of polysubstance use among youths. This is associated with long-term negative health and social outcomes following the increased use of e-cigarette vaping and cannabis legalization in Canada. The authors investigate the evidence of this poly substance to inform effective prevention and harm reduction programming. They used a cross-sectional sample in a cohort study in Canadian High Schools. The questionnaire used contained five substances, for instance, alcohol, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cannabis, and opioids, concerning social, school support, and mental health-related measures.
The results obtained indicated that demographic factors were associated with polysubstance use in that male students were more likely to use not one but multiple substances. Spending money was also a factor, as it increased the likelihood of substance use due to the growing impact of the dollar amount.
The main limitations of the article are that there were factors such as recall and social desirability biases, the link between substance use and school absenteeism, and the non-exhaustive nature of the questionnaire in terms of the substances included, which may have resulted in underreporting of substance use. The questionnaire did not distinguish between simultaneous use and contemporary use.
The funding for this research was supported by a bridge grant from the CIHR Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes, which significantly contributed to the success of this study. Because interventions for youth polysubstance use should rely mainly on the joint efforts of parents, communities, and schools, it is now appropriate to focus on structural factors rather than problematizing the individual. This information will serve a great purpose in my research, as I have sufficient information on what should be focused on to address the problem of polysubstance use among youth.
Moore, G. F., Cox, R., Evans, R. E., Hallingberg, B., Hawkins, J., Littlecott, H. J.,… & Murphy, S. (2018). School, Peer and Family Relationships and Adolescent Substance Use, Subjective Wellbeing and Mental Health Symptoms in Wales: A Cross-Sectional Study. Child Indicators Research, 11(6), 1951-1965. Web.
In this article, Moore et. al. discuss the association between young people’s interactions with microsystems and their health and wellbeing outcomes. They found that positive relationships with teachers and support from family were associated with better mental health and a lower risk of substance use. They also found that strong and supportive relationships with friends increased the risk of drinking, smoking, and drug use.
In contrast, young people who were strongly connected to peers in the school environment had better wellbeing and mental health. The nature of the association between support from friends and family support ran in opposing directions. For young people who reported less family support, there was a high degree of friends associated with increased mental health symptoms and a higher risk of cannabis use. Additionally, if young people perceived a limited closeness to their family, peers had a greater influence than family members. They also found that support from friends may positively influence young people’s wellbeing when accompanied by family support.
The primary limitation of this study is that it is based on cross-sectional data, which cannot demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships. Additionally, using secondary data for analysis that was not specifically designed for this study means that the connectedness to family, school, and peers is not directly comparable. The measures of mental health and wellbeing in the survey are simplistic, given the complex and multidimensional nature of these constructs, and this, therefore, calls for further research to understand the causal effect nature of investigations in this study. This article is a valuable resource and will be a great tool in my research paper, as it provides clear and in-depth information on the institution’s role in adolescent substance use. It will also be used as a resource for upcoming research projects.