Youth Alcohol Abuse: A Profound Problem
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Recent alcohol abuse statistics reveal that alcohol abuse among teens is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? Many substance abuse experts claim that beer, wine, and liquor ads generated by the media are an essential reason for the expansion of teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcohol addiction specialists state that the increase in teen alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and accessibility of alcohol in our society.
Still other alcoholism specialists declare that many of our teens involve themselves in excessive drinking due to the increased disquiet that they face.
From a somewhat different standpoint, since both parents in quite a few families work full or part-time, the lack of parental guidance certainly has to play an essential role in the spread of youth alcohol abuse. And lastly, different alcohol abuse specialists think that the rise in teenage alcohol abuse is due, in some degree, to our laissez-faire society.
Coping Skills and Abusive Drinking
One component of youth alcohol abuse that looks like it is somewhat incomplete in the chemical dependency research literature, in spite of this, is the paucity of educational programs that teach teenagers how to upgrade their coping skills so that their harmful drinking behavior is notably reduced or eliminated.
More explicitly, science has illustrated the fact that there is an indirect association between poor coping skills and alcohol abuse. In essence, this means that the more mediocre the coping skills, the higher the rate of alcohol abuse. To the extent that this is a correct argument, why isn’t coping skills training a significant part of the academic prospectus in all of our junior high schools, elementary schools, and high schools?
A Society That Emphasizes Youth Coping Skills
Let us construct a scenario for explanatory purposes. Let us imagine a society in which all people are trained how to achieve superior coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.
In such a society, when life gets complicated, students who are “coping skills masters” will be able to respond in a healthier and more rewarding way, contrary to others who fail to apply their coping skills.
More specifically, students who display high-quality coping skills will be more able to think logically and exhibit top quality decision making as opposed to teenagers who, because they were unsuccessful in their attempts to implement top quality coping skills, gravitate to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, additionally, if teens not only received outstanding coping skills education but also got an extraordinary education that accentuated the long term and short term injurious results associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these kinds of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills instruction, it is advocated, would help teens stay away from the obvious appeal related to adolescent drinking and, as a result, would radically lessen the risky drinking behavior displayed by the youth in our country.
Teenage Hazardous Drinking: Conclusion
There are surely a number of sound reasons why so many of our adolescents drink in a dangerous manner. Such a knotty predicament demands an extensive and relevant preventative and educational response by our politicians, students, educators, and parents so that our teenagers can learn how to cope with life’s difficulties in a more fruitful and responsible way rather than resorting to excessive drinking behavior to solve their difficulties.
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