Abstract
Mental disorders, including substance use disorders, frequently arise during adolescence and track into adulthood. Protracted neurodevelopment may prime adolescents toward the substance use and increase the vulnerability to harm. Effective public health efforts to reduce the harms of substance use among young people are critically important. Evidence supporting the effectiveness of substance use prevention for young people is mixed with most evidence supporting universal programs, which target early (12–14 years) to middle (15 years) adolescents. With the recent downward trend in early and mid adolescent substance use, late adolescence now represents the average age of initial substance use exposure and is a critical period to prevent harmful trajectories of substance use. Late adolescence, when young people are in the senior years of their school education, represents an optimal developmental period to intervene; however, age-appropriate interventions targeting late adolescents (16–19 years) are extremely limited. This chapter will assess current approaches to substance use prevention and explore new opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of prevention among both low- and high-risk young people.
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Abbreviations
- 10–14 years:
-
Early adolescents
- 10–19 years:
-
Adolescents
- 10–24 years:
-
Young people
- 15 years:
-
Mid adolescents
- 16–19 years:
-
Late adolescents
- 20–24 years:
-
Young adults
- ATS:
-
Amphetamine-type stimulants
- MDMA:
-
Methylenedioxymethamphetamine
- PFC:
-
Prefrontal cortex
- SAMHSA:
-
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
- SANE:
-
Seductive allure of neuroscience explanations
- UK:
-
United Kingdom
- UNODC:
-
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
- USA:
-
United States
- WHO:
-
World Health Organization
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Debenham, J., Newton, N.C., Champion, K.E., Teesson, M. (2022). Substance use in older adolescence: Overcoming the prevention paradox. In: Patel, V.B., Preedy, V.R. (eds) Handbook of Substance Misuse and Addictions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67928-6_20-1
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