The late teens is an important transitional period as adolescents move into new social worlds which support or challenge their smoking. This paper draws on research with 99 Scottish 16- to 19-year olds which explored their understanding of their smoking and attitudes towards quitting and cessation support. The study involved qualitative interviews…

Mental health counselors, school counselors, and rehabilitation counselors, much like other professional counselors, encounter clients whose lives are somehow affected by substance use and addictions. Although counselors regularly encounter substance-dependent clients, spouses, children, and/or employers affected by substance abuse, training in…

The development of motivational interviewing (MI) has contributed to a significant change in the zeitgeist of substance abuse treatment. Dr. William Miller has been instrumental in the direction MI has taken. Dr. Miller helped develop MI, guide research and training initiatives, and as a result set a solid foundation for the future of MI. In this…

Self-injurious behavior is the intentional harming of one's own body. Little attention has been given to SIB in the past, particularly in terms of innovative treatment approaches. Adolescents are at a particularly high-risk for developing this ineffectual coping mechanism. School counselors are in a unique position to aid in the identification of…

Objective: This article identifies behavioral trajectories of American Indian adolescents and examines their predictors. Method: A total of 401 urban and reservation American Indian adolescents were interviewed yearly from 2001 to 2004 (with 341 youths, or 85%, retained to 2004, and 385 completing at least two interviews). The Youth Self-Report…

The Vernonia School District v. Acton Supreme Court decision in 1995, forever changed the landscape of the legality of drug testing in schools. This decision stated that students who were involved in athletic programs could be drug tested as long as the student's privacy was not invaded. According to some in the medical profession, there are two…

A paradigm shift in counselor preparation is underway. This change is driven by a number of forces, as highlighted in this article, which are moving chemical dependency counselor preparation toward more formal educational approaches and consequently toward more professionalism. There are important differences between occupational training and more…

The present study examined the perceived need for CACREP-accredited counselor education programs to formalize curriculum standards for substance abuse counseling courses. The participants were university professors who are CACREP liaisons for currently accredited counselor education programs. A survey was conducted using questions constructed from…

Per se, increased knowledge about substance abuse has not been effective in altering social workers' negative attitudes towards substance abusers or their failure to recognize or address substance abuse problems among clients. In this paper, we describe an experiential abstinence assignment integrated with the content of an elective substance…

The return to drug seeking, even after prolonged periods of abstinence, is a defining feature of cocaine addiction. The neural circuitry underlying relapse has been identified in neuropharmacological studies of experimental animals, typically rats, and supported in brain imaging studies of human addicts. Although the nucleus accumbens (NAcc),…

Neuroscientific approaches to drug addiction traditionally have been based on the premise that addiction is a process that results from brain changes that in turn result from chronic administration of drugs of abuse. An alternative approach views drug addiction as a behavioral disorder in which drugs function as preeminent reinforcers. Although…

This article explores sex tourism and possible concerns for the male sex tourist through a content analysis of sex tourism web sites. This qualitative, exploratory study describes the manner in which sex tour web sites attract and maintain male customers. Findings related to mens psychosocial health are placed within an international context.…

The clinical aspects and staff training needs for two substance use disorder (SUD) treatment programs that serve persons with co-existing disabilities are described. The article addresses SUD prevalence among persons with disabilities and the corresponding specialized treatment needs and accommodations that may be necessary. The philosophical…

As part of the effort to reduce cigarette smoking--the single most preventable cause of death in the society--researchers have tried for over half a century to identify effective school-based anti-tobacco education that can discourage tobacco use among children and adolescents. Unfortunately, deaf and hard of hearing young people have been largely…

Relative reinforcing efficacy refers to the behavior-strengthening or maintaining property of a reinforcer when compared to that of another reinforcer. Traditional measures of relative reinforcing efficacy sometimes have led to discordant results across and within studies. By contrast, previous investigations have found traditional measures to be…