Healthcare today is getting rather complicated when it comes to adolescents. In today’s society people do not understand how illicit drugs and alcohol is readily assessible to adolescents. According to the Addiction Center the tern illicit drugs “refer to highly addictive and illegal substances such as heroin, marijuana and meth” (Juergens, 2020, para. 1). These are the drugs that our adolescents are getting ahold of and becoming addictive too. While doing the research on adolescent addiction, there are some major concerns we need to focus on. The concerns are who it is affecting, the cost, and prevention.
According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine the definition of Addiction is “a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestation. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors. Addiction is characterized by inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioral control, craving and diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationship, and a dysfunctional emotional response. Like other chronic diseases, addiction often involves cycles of relapse and remission. Without treatment in recovery activities, addiction is progressive and can result in disability or premature death” (American Society of Addiction Medicine, 2011).
To begin with, according to the Journal of Pediatric Health Care, “In 2014, 27 million people ages 12 years or older had used an illicit drug in the past 30 days, which corresponds to about 1 in 10 American (10.2%)” (Searcy, 2017, para. 2). This is starting to affect our elementary schools. Kids in elementary schools should not be into these things let alone know what these types of drugs are. The Journal of American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry states “Eleven percent of Adolescents meet diagnostic criteria for a substance abuse disorder before the age of 18” (Merikangas et al., 2010, para. 2).
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Children becoming addicted to illicit drugs are becoming a Pediatric epidemic. As a parent, it is looking like the age of illicit drugs use is going to get lower and lower. The younger the child gets into illicit drugs, the greater chances they will become addicted, if they were to wait and try drugs out later in life the easier it would be for them to stop using the drugs. “The median age of initiation of illicit use in adults diagnosed with any substance abuse disorder is 16 years old” (Chambers, Taylor, & Potenza, 2003, para. 1). The American journal of psychiatry also states “50% of initiation of use occurs between the ages of 15-18 years old, and it is rare for there to be initiation of use after age 20” (Chambers et al., 2003, para. 1).
The adolescents with addiction do not only effect themselves, but the parents, grandparents, siblings, friends and even strangers. Addiction effects the family in many ways. One major issue family have with an adolescent who has an addiction is stealing and lying. Parents find themselves struggling with theft from their own child when that particular child needs to get his high. Most adolescents do not have jobs so they will steal money, jewelry, or just about anything they can steal and sell for drug money. Single parents have the hardest time with these issues because they are never home as they are working trying to keep the families afloat.
Another way it effects families is a lot of parents are having to bury their teens because they overdose on their drugs. Parents should not have to bury their own children especially from choices the child makes and could have been prevented. The last way that it effects the family and strangers is, if they are not getting the money or things to sell from the family they will go out and start robbing people or stores to get the means to go buy their drugs. Not only are they killing others who had nothing to do with their drugs, they are putting the burden on their families of spending the money on lawyers, and court fees.
Next, the cost of our adolescents and use of illicit drugs and alcohol in the past 30 days is causing our country some major financial issues. “The direct financial cost in the United States stemming from addiction are more than 740 billion dollars annually” (Brellenthin & Lee, 2018). The different association broke it down by how much annually adolescents are costing them. The American Association for Cancer cost “216.6 billion per year cost of cancer”(‘Cancer in 2014,’ 2014). American Diabetes spent “322 billion per year” (‘American Dibaetes Association,’ 2013). Last, the American Heart Association spent “316.6 billion dollars due to adolescent using illicit drugs” (‘American Heart Association,’ 2016). Kids these days should be racking up government loans for school and enjoying being a kid, not trying to see when they can get their next fix or high.
Third, as nurses in Health Care we need to figure out a way to help prevent these adolescents to steer away from illicit drugs and smoking. For the adolescents who have not started smoking or using illicit drugs, we need to make sure during their physicals we are talking to them about risky behaviors of illicit drugs and all the diseases that could come about. There is numerous disease they could catch from sharing needles. Also, we need to talk to them about the health concerns that are associated with smoking.
The main focus with our adolescents who have used illicit drugs or smoked in the last 30 days would be to treat any illness associated with their behaviors. As stated in our Fundamentals of Nursing book” Tertiary prevention occurs when a defect or disability is permanent and irreversible. It involves minimizing the effects of long-term disease or disability by interventions directly at preventing complications and deterioration” (Potter & Perry, 2017, Chapter 6). Another way as health care professions we need to help prevent our adolescents from smoking or doing illicit drugs would be to teach parents or grandparents of the adolescents of signs and symptoms of risky behaviors.
Substance abuse or adolescents using illicit drugs or smoking is not only affecting the families of these adolescents, it is affecting us as a country. As stated above we have a lot of money going into problems with adolescents alone using these drugs and smoking. If you ever think that this epidemic is not affecting you as a citizen, you should think again. We as taxpayers are also helping pay this billion to try to save our youth.
References
- American Association for Cancer Research. (2014). Retrieved February 11, 2020, from https://www.cancerprogressreport.org/pages/searchresults.aspx?k=cancer%202014
- American Diabetes Association. (2013). Retrieved January 28, 2020, from http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-diabetes.html
- American Heart Association: Heart and stroke statistics. (2016). Retrieved January 28, 2020, from http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/general/heart-and-stroke-association-statistics_UCM_319064_SubHomePage.jsp
- Merikangas, K. R., M.Sc, J. H., Burstein, M., Swanson, S. A., Avenevoli, S., Cui, L., … Swendsen, J. (2010). Lifetime Prevalence of Mental Disorders in U.S. Adolescents: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Reolication-Adolescent Supplements. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry , 49, 980-989. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0890856710004764
- Potter, P. A., & Perry, A. G. (2017). Fundamentals of Nursing (9 ed.). [https://online.vitalsource.com/books/9780323327404]. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/books/9780323327404
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2016a). Leading health indicators. Healthy People 2020 website. Retrieved from http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/leading-health-indicators/2020-LHI-Topics
