This article follows up on the information presented in our post National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week: The Latest Data on Adolescent Drug Use. In that article, we offered a string of useful statistics about teens and drug use. We asked you to think about how to use this latest round of data from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) to help your teen. We’re doing the same with

In Part One of “Does My Teen Need Drug Rehab?” we discussed the basic levels of care you might find if you decide to seek treatment for your teen. We also reviewed the new vocabulary around addiction treatment. The accepted term for what used to be called drug rehab is now treatment for substance use disorders. There are many reasons for the change in terminology, and none of them are

Drug rehab – known these days as treatment for substance use disorders – comes in many shapes and forms. If you’re worried your teen has a problem with drugs and needs treatment, don’t panic. Your first step should be to seek the help of a qualified mental health professional. You can find a reputable professional in your area with this psychiatrist finder provided by the American Academy of Child and

In 2010, a group of scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) launched an initiative to teach teenagers the real facts about drug use and drug addiction. By real facts, we – and the scientists who began the initiative – mean those facts supported by research, backed by data, and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Their goal was to enlist experts to engage with teenagers in order to

In 1975, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded the first large-scale, nationwide survey of nicotine, alcohol, and drug use among high school students, college students, and young adults in the U.S. Conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, the Monitoring the Future Survey began with high school seniors and added eight and tenth graders in 1991. Over fifty-thousand students and

As the parent of a teenager, you’ve got a lot on your mind. You want the best for your kids, so you pay monitor their grades, their friends, their extracurricular activities, and their social life – especially once they hit high school. Unless you live under a rock, you’re concerned about the opioid epidemic sweeping the nation. You read articles about big pharmaceutical companies flooding rural communities with millions of

The Consequences of Untreated Addiction It’s not easy to admit your teenager has an addiction problem. It’s a realization that can take parents years to come to terms with. The evidence may have been right in front of you, plain to see, from the first time your child stayed out past curfew. Or the time they came home with glassy eyes or and alcohol on their breath. You may have

Parents always want what’s best for their kids. It starts the moment they’re born, if not before. Most parents see their child for the first time and think something along lines of “Well, I know what I’m doing for the next eighteen years.” Parents of grown children chuckle at this sentiment: they know the parenting never stops. Whether their kids are twenty-two or forty-two, their first impulse is to help

Adolescence is a time of radical transformation. This transitional period between youth and adulthood is characterized significant change in virtually every area of life. Teens develop physically, emotionally, intellectually, and socially. They form their own identities – separate and distinct from their parents – and engage in an evolving, instinctive process of trial and error to learn about themselves and find their place in the world. Through a series of