Background
The prevalence of substance abuse cases and increasing aberrant behavior patterns among adolescents raise significant concerns to parents and community health workers due to their implications on the teens’ social development. Drug addictions among adolescents increase long-term physiological and mental health risks, low educational attainment, poor financial management, run-ins with the legal system, and suicide ideation. Complications associated with the comorbidity of substance abuse and psychiatric disorders necessitate comprehensive and well-designed intervention strategies to sufficiently mitigate the identified problems and improve outcomes among affected teenagers. In ideal situations, the family should offer fundamental support structures to assist adolescents experiencing substance abuse disorders by facilitating behavior changes and instilling effective coping strategies. However, the widespread disruptions, traumatic-experiences, and dysfunctions in family units observed across communities reduce the effectiveness of traditional approaches through impaired relations within households. Trauma-informed care focuses on enhancing impacted individual’s resilience in managing and coping with their health issues through collaboration, trustworthiness, choice and empowerment, and improved safety. The current paper reviews the implementation of family therapy as a strategy to address substance abuse among teenagers in single-parent families.
Adolescent Substance Abuse in Single Parent Families
Substance abuse is among the leading causes of preventable disabilities, premature mortalities, underachievement, disruptive behaviors, and justice system involvement among teenagers in America and other developed countries. The problematic nature of adolescent substance abuse primarily results from issues such as peer pressure and inadequate social skills, poor parenting, and teens’ experimentation with drugs that expose them to life-threatening behaviors. Adverse childhood experiences caused by parental substance abuse, impaired relations with caregivers, and other dysfunctions in families contribute to the increasing teen substance abuse. Most worryingly, single parents face many challenges that complicate their efforts to address substance use disorders among their adolescent children due to fatigue and limited time from their work commitments. Consequently, mitigating teen substance abuse in single parent households demands the establishment of firm foundations to increase the at-risk populations’ awareness of the problem’s health and socioeconomic implications. Family therapy offers robust and structured psychotherapeutic tools to address conflicts and distress in family settings by enhancing relations among family members. Family therapists can assist individuals experiencing mental health problems, medical issues, or addictions by strengthening the available social support structures through increased engagements with close relatives.
Family Therapy as an Intervention Strategy: Annotated Bibliography
Ventura, A. S., & Bagley, S. M. (2017). To improve substance use disorder prevention, treatment and recovery: Engage the family. Journal of Addiction Medicine, 11(5), 339-341.
Ventura and Bagley draw on their experience as addiction experts at the Boston Medical Center to provide an authoritative assessment of family in managing substance abuse among teenagers. Ventura and Bagley highlight the positive impacts of strengthened family relations on the perceptions and treatment outcomes among people with substance abuse disorders. Ventura and Bagley (2017) suggest that healthcare practitioners should reevaluate their explicit and implicit assumptions about the family members’ roles in developing, treating, and rehabilitating substance abuse disorders. Most significantly, the authors assert the importance of engaging family members in the psychotherapeutic process to enhance health outcomes for all affected persons. The practice implications identified in Ventura and Bagley’s study is that social workers and healthcare practitioners should emphasize families’ active involvement in the teenagers’ treatment. The article is relevant to the current topic because it stresses the need for positive family engagement in managing drug abuse among teenagers in community settings. The trauma-informed human rights perspectives is applicable in the current situation by addressing the teen substance abusers’ sociological and psychological wellbeing through increased collaborations and enhanced safety.
Kumpfer, K. L., & Magalhaes, C. (2018). Strengthening families program: An evidence-based family intervention for parents of high-risk children and adolescents. Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse, 27(3), 174-179.
The article by Kumpfer and Magalhaes’ investigates the effectiveness of the Strengthening Families Program (SFP) as a preventive psychotherapeutic strategy to mitigate the risks of substance abuse disorders among teens and preadolescents. The authors provide a comprehensive overview of culturally appropriate and age-focused studies on the application of different SFP versions in America and other nations to determine its effectiveness. A significant proposition presented in the article is the conceptualization of the risks of teen substance abuse as a family disease. Kumpfer and Magalhaes (2018) observe that the SFP’s objective is breaking the intergenerational substance abuse cycle through improved parenting and family skills. The important practice implications from Kumpfer and Magalhaes’ article are the necessity of positive reinforcement, family attachment, and dissemination of positive expectations and values to increase the impacted teens’ participation in the psychotherapeutic process. Kumpfer and Magalhaes’ article targets psychotherapists, social workers, parents, and scholars in the social sciences. Social workers can apply a trauma-informed human rights perspective by underscoring the adolescents heightened risks of substance abuse and strengthening bonds with their clients through trust and transparency.
Clarahan, W., & Christenson, J. D. (2017). Family Involvement in the Treatment of Adolescent Substance Abuse. Focused Issues in Family Therapy, 231–243.
Clarahan and Christenson apply their expansive knowledge in substance abuse and mental health disorders from their work at Covenant Family Solutions and Mount Mercy University to propose evidence-based strategies to mitigate teenage addictions. Clarahan and Christenson (2017) underscore the value of improved educational functioning and open communication between parents and their at-risk or impacted teenagers. Most importantly, Clarahan and Christenson assert the importance of increasing the parents’ awareness of addiction’s neuroscience to address various misconceptions that contribute to unsatisfactory outcomes. The practice implications identified from the presented findings that could facilitate the planning of effective family-based interventions is preparing educational materials to address misconceptions about drug abuse among teenager and increase family involvement in psychotherapy. Some of the evidence-based family therapies recommended by the authors include multidimensional family therapy, brief strategic family therapy, multiple family group, and multisystemic therapy. Clarahan and Christenson’s article is appropriate for the current paper because it highlights the various family-based and focused therapies proven effective in addressing drug addictions. The authors target caregivers, social workers, students, policymakers, and academicians engaged in substance abuse mitigation. The trauma-informed human rights perspectives relevant to understanding the problem are the sociological and biological factors that increase adolescents’ vulnerabilities to substance abuse and mitigating such issues through collaborations and improved safety.
Liddle, H. A., Dakof, G. A., Rowe, C. L., Henderson, C., Greenbaum, P., Wang, W., & Alberga, L. (2018). Multidimensional family therapy as a community-based alternative to residential treatment for adolescents with substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 90(6), 47-56.
Liddle et al. conducted a comparative RCT study to assess the effectiveness of residential treatment against multidimensional family therapy in managing comorbidities of psychiatric disorders and drug addictions among adolescents. In their assessment, the authors observe that residential treatment is a prevalent psychotherapeutic approach among practitioners. However, its effectiveness remains unascertained due to the scarcity of quality comparative studies and weak research designs. Most importantly, Liddle et al. (2018) point out the prohibitive costs and insignificant therapeutic modalities of residential treatment that have forced policymakers and caregivers to develop alternative interventions. The authors consider family-based strategies such as the multidimensional family therapy appropriate for managing drug addictions and psychiatric problems among teenagers due to its positive long-term effects and affordability. The practice implication from Liddle et al.’s article that could influence planned family-based interventions is identifying cost-effective alternatives to traditional psychotherapeutic approaches. Liddle et al.’s article is valuable reference material for policymakers, community health workers, healthcare practitioners, and scholars interested in developing successful interventions for drug addictions and psychiatric disorders. The article is relevant to the current study and essential because it introduces a unique family-based psychotherapeutic strategy to address the identified problem. A trauma-informed human rights approach can be integrated to address the identified issue by highlighting alternative treatment options that are affordable and effective in mitigating teen drug addictions.
References
Clarahan, W., & Christenson, J. D. (2017). Family Involvement in the Treatment of Adolescent Substance Abuse. Focused Issues in Family Therapy, 231–243.
Kumpfer, K. L., & Magalhaes, C. (2018). Strengthening families program: An evidence-based family intervention for parents of high-risk children and adolescents. Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse, 27(3), 174-179.
Liddle, H. A., Dakof, G. A., Rowe, C. L., Henderson, C., Greenbaum, P., Wang, W., & Alberga, L. (2018). Multidimensional family therapy as a community-based alternative to residential treatment for adolescents with substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 90(6), 47-56.
Ventura, A. S., & Bagley, S. M. (2017). To improve substance use disorder prevention, treatment and recovery: Engage the family. Journal of Addiction Medicine, 11(5), 339-341.
