How targeting teenage drug use before it starts seems to be paying off

Alison Northcott · CBC News

· Posted: Feb 28, 2025 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: February 28

This communicative is portion of CBC Health's Second Opinion, a play investigation of wellness and aesculapian subject quality emailed to subscribers connected Saturday mornings. If you haven't subscribed yet, you tin bash that by clicking here.

A cause prevention programme that began successful Montreal has been recovered to trim the hazard of substance usage disorders successful teens by offering them tools and strategies to header with property traits similar impulsivity and anxiety.

"If a young idiosyncratic is reporting precise precocious levels of these traits, they're much apt to usage substances arsenic a mode to negociate those traits," said Patricia Conrod, laminitis of the PreVenture program, who is besides a psychiatry prof astatine the Université de Montréal and a idiosyncratic astatine Sainte-Justine infirmary successful Montreal.

A caller survey successful the American Journal of Psychiatry looked astatine the interaction of PreVenture successful 31 Montreal-area precocious schools implicit a five-year period.

The survey recovered the programme helped trim the maturation successful the likelihood of substance usage upset by 35 per cent twelvemonth implicit year, compared with a control group.

Conrod told CBC News that the likelihood of processing a substance usage upset summation arsenic students get older.

The programme focuses connected specified traits arsenic impulsivity, sensation seeking, anxiousness sensitivity and hopelessness — each of which whitethorn pb teens to crook to substance usage to cope. During two 90-minute workshops fixed successful Grade 7, students summation penetration into their ain personalities and tools to negociate them.

The programme uses cognitive behavioural therapy, interactive exercises and radical discussions to find personality-specific coping strategies.

'I tin woody with them, truthful I consciousness better'

Fara Thifault, 13, a Grade 7 pupil astatine Collège de Montréal, participated successful a store past fall.

"I didn't recognize I had antagonistic thoughts, and erstwhile I did that [workshop], I realized, 'Yeah I get them a batch and this is however I tin woody with them, truthful I consciousness better,'" she said.

Grade 10 pupil Romane Roussel, 16, said the workshops helped her, too.

"I'm little impulsive present due to the fact that I usage immoderate techniques, I instrumentality a breather," she said.

Conrod said portion a increasing assemblage of grounds supports the PreVenture program and others similar it, schools crossed the state request sustained funding, including from national and provincial governments, to present them much widely.

"Some substance usage disorders are preventable, and we should beryllium making definite that young radical person entree to the programs and the resources they need," she said.

The programme is presently disposable successful schools successful 5 Canadian provinces, including Quebec, Ontario and British Colombia, arsenic good arsenic successful respective U.S. states.

Christine Schwartz, an adjunct prof astatine the Children's Health Policy Centre astatine Vancouver's Simon Fraser University, said policy-makers thin to prioritize attraction implicit prevention erstwhile it comes to substance use.

"It's a small spot harder for policy-makers to enactment the wealth towards prevention knowing they whitethorn not spot the benefits — and determination volition beryllium benefits successful galore of these cases, but they're not going to spot them for respective years," she said successful an interview.

Schwartz was portion of a squad that examined school-based prevention programs astir the world, including PreVenture.

"There's been a agelong past of utilizing programs that haven't needfully been effective," she said. "What's happening present is that policy-makers are progressively turning to the probe evidence."

What's missing, Schwartz said, is backing to support programs and enactment them successful spot much widely.

WATCH | Parent hires backstage researcher to way down daughter's cause dealer:

Prevention earlier treatment

Justin Phillips's son Aaron died of a heroin overdose successful 2013, erstwhile helium was 20, successful Indianapolis. She described him arsenic an "impulsive, sensation-seeking kid."

He erstwhile skateboarded disconnected the extortion of her house, Phillips recalled, but said he was besides precise delicate and sometimes anxious.

These are each traits, she said, that young radical and their families don't ever person the tools to admit and manage.

"Had we had these tools, I perfectly judge things would person been different," she said successful an interview.

The twelvemonth aft her son's death, Phillips founded an enactment called Overdose Lifeline to support other families dealing with addiction and to beforehand prevention. She is besides progressive with PreVenture, grooming radical to present the workshops and moving to bring the programme to much communities successful the United States.

"Prevention has ne'er been thing that we've enactment up of treatment," she said. "I stay hopeful, but I don't deliberation we're moving arsenic accelerated arsenic maine and each the countless different parents privation that we could."