IS YOUR CHILD AT RISK?
Risk factors are not absolute predictors. Even those with few risk factors may be involved with drugs or alcohol. More risk factors does statistically increase the likelihood that your child will engage in drug or alcohol use.
Factors that increase a child's risk for using substances and possibly developing a substance abuse problem include personal, family, and community risk factors.*
Additional risk factors, according to a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, include:
- Stress High stress teens are twice as likely.
- Boredom Often bored teens are 50 percent more likely.
- Money Teens with $25 or more a week in spending money are nearly twice as likely to smoke or use drugs and over twice as likely to drink.
PERSONAL RISK FACTORS*
- Family history of substance abuse
- Temperament and personality - Rebelliousness, resistance of authority, feelings of failure, and failure to form close relationships and sensation-seeking or a tendency to take risks
- Having certain diseases or conditions. Those with ADHD,conduct disorders, depression, post-traumatic distress disorder, or anxiety disorder may use alcohol or other drugs to relieve their symptoms. Also, alcohol and drug abuse behaviors are more likely to lead to these conditions. Having been abused is more likely to lead to use of more than one substance and to start abusing alcohol and drugs at an earlier age.
- Drug expectations. Children develop an expectation of what taking a substance will be like from parents, peers, the media, and personal experience. Teens often have misconceptions about the harmful effects of alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs, and they often think that "everybody does it" and so should they.
- Early age of first use. Abusing alcohol or other drugs at a young age greatly increases the risk for developing an abuse problem.
FAMILY RISK FACTORS*
- Parental use of substances.
- Parental attitudes. Children with parents believe that alcohol and drug experimentation is expected and normal are more likely to use alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. In addition, they may interpret their parents' ambivalent attitude toward substance use as approval of the behavior.
- Lack of connectedness. Those from families with frequent conflict, physical or sexual abuse, or psychological stress are more likely to try alcohol and drugs. Without feelings of closeness, they may look to alcohol or drugs to compensate for the emotional pain.
- Lack of consistent parental involvement. Lack of consistent involvement in a child's life and lack of appropriate supervision increases the risk for abusing alcohol, cigarettes, or other drugs. Harsh or inconsistent punishment or permissiveness also increase the risk for alcohol and drug abuse.
COMMUNITY RISK FACTORS*
- Access to substances. Easy access to a cigarette machine, active drug trading, substance-abusing role models, or substance use that is accepted and tolerated in the community can contribute the likelihood of using substances. Having cigarettes, alcohol, or other drugs in the home also increases the chances.
- Peer influence. Peers heavily influence the choice to use substances. This can result from a desire to fit in with a group and then choosing a group that uses substances.
- Promotion of alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs by media. The entertainment and other media portray alcohol and cigarette use as "cool." Ads portray alcohol use as a way to gain popularity, success, and sex appeal. Music and movies also portray cigarettes and other drugs as glamorous.
Return to our Parents Place
* Source: WebMD
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Return to our Parents Place
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- Use of alcohol or other drugs at an early age is an indicator of future alcohol or drug problems
- People who begin smoking before age 13 are significantly more likely to have problems with alcohol and other drugs
- 56% of students in grades 5 to 12 say that alcohol advertising encourages them to drink
- 30% of children in grades four through six report that they have received "a lot" of pressure from their classmates to drink beer; 31% to try marijuana; and 34% to try cigarettes
- Use of alcohol and other drugs is associated with the leading causes of death and injury (motor-vehicle crashes, homicides, and suicides) among teenagers and young adults
- Drinking and driving increases substantially among youth and young adults with the frequency of alcohol use and is strongly associated with binge drinking
Source: National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence
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