Reviews alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use by youth in the United Kingdom, and explores some problems with drug education in Scottish schools. Discusses teachers' lack of confidence in their own credibility as drug educators; moral dilemmas arising from values conflicts between teachers, students, and families; teacher responsibilities; and…

Study tests two models to compare the effects of risk and resiliency across gender and ethnicity. Results support the model in which risk and resiliency are discrete sets of factors and demonstrate that overall resiliency factors play a larger role than risk factors in substance use and drug resistance processes. Gender proved to be an important…

Family influence has been established as one of the strongest sources of risk and protection when considering adolescent substance abuse. Theories used to view the family influence include family systems theory; social cognitive theory; social control theory; and strain theory. Specific family-based risk and protective factors include family…

Reviews and interprets some recent literature on substance abuse problems and treatments among women. Major risk factors include childhood sexual or physical abuse, domestic violence, and a spouse or partner who abuses substances. Discusses the enormous problems of access to treatment for women with minor children. (JPS)

Points out the growing crisis among American adolescents, with approximately half of adolescents at moderate or greater risk for engaging in unsafe sexual behaviors, teenage pregnancy, and teenage child-bearing; drug and alcohol use and abuse; school underachievement, failure, and dropout; and delinquency and crime. Calls for increased research on…

Interviewed Bucharest street children, most between 11 and 15 years of age. Found that most left families, not institutions. Half were from intact families characterized by many children, an incarcerated parent, physical violence, sexual abuse, or alcoholism. Most worked either begging or in casual labor, and engaged in substance abuse.…

An evaluation of case management services to families on public assistance suggests that a "logic model" and an "open systems" evaluation approach might be useful in program evaluation. A second study describes how the logic model and open systems evaluation were used to develop an evaluation plan for services to homeless…

Study represents one of the first undertaken exclusively with students who brought weapons to school. Questions examined measures of student and family relationships, as well as attitudes and behavior among students caught with weapons at school. Findings support the need for substance abuse assessments and family interventions that strengthen…

Discusses what to do when substance-abuse-prevention efforts for adolescents fail, examining differences between normal experimentation and substance abuse, how to spot a problem, where to turn for help, how to get adolescents into treatment, treatment options, and aftercare for continuing support. One sidebar explains that no drugs are harmless;…

Studied the roles of demographic, school, nonschool, and personality factors in predicting the use of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs and maintenance of this use. Findings for 425 Scottish secondary school students show different predictive factors. Discusses implications of the findings for decreasing the prevalence of substance use. (SLD)

Illustrates how clinical and research writings on gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) issues remain invisible to mainstream psychology in such areas as life span development and aging, teen suicide, substance abuse, victimization, and family and couple relationships, examining determinants of wellbeing among GLBs and discussing what mainstream…

Describes the development, implementation, and replication of a group-based parenting program for families affected by substance abuse, called the Nurturing Program for Families in Substance Abuse Treatment and Recovery in Massachusetts. Highlights early evaluation results showing that the program improves parenting and enhances parents'…

Identified the best methods of reaching people at high risk with HIV-prevention messages. Data from men who had sex with men, injection drug users, sex workers, HIV-positive people, heterosexuals, migrant workers, and perinatal women indicated that over 70 percent were exposed to HIV-prevention messages, though sources of exposure varied by risk…

The Healthy Nations initiative supported 14 American Indian and Alaska Native communities in their efforts to reduce the harm done by drug and alcohol abuse. Three programs in Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, and Alaskan communities are described, that entail community organizing, youth recreational activities, indigenous role models, adventure activities,…

Objective: There were two aims: first, to examine the relationship between prior sexual abuse and three types of adult risky sexual behaviors [(1) ever traded sex for drugs or money, (2) had unprotected sex in the past 6 months, and (3) frequency of unprotected sex in the past 6 months] among persons with severe mental illness (SMI), and second,…