Without question, substance abuse treatment is effective for adolescents. According to a national study of community based treatment programs for young people, weekly marijuana use decreased by more than half in the year following treatment. Less heavy drinking, less use of hard drugs, and less criminal involvement was also reported. The study also found that more teens attended school and reported average or better than average grades after successfully completing treatment. That’s the good news. The bad news is that youth today are facing some stressors that their parents never did. Exposure to weapons, gangs and violence; pressure to pass proficiency exams to graduate; pressure from friends to engage in risky behaviors are only a few. Couple these pressures with the fact that youth are surrounded by increasingly graphic messages from the media – television, movies, video games, music, and the Internet – glamorizing drugs and alcohol, and it is no wonder that the number of youth engaging in alcohol and drug use in Ohio is on the rise.
While we like to think that help is available to substance abusing youth who need it, the fact of the matter is there are many barriers to these services for Ohio’s young people. With the help of a
generous federal grant, the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services (ODADAS) is in the process of surveying providers, clients and referral entities to systematically identify the gaps in services so that they can develop a comprehensive plan to address them. Until the hard numbers are in, the experiences of mental health and substance abuse professionals who work with adolescents suggest that the following circumstances pose barriers to effective treatment:
- Most treatment providers are concentrated in metropolitan areas, limiting choices for Ohio’s rural population.
- There are not enough gender and culturally specific programs for African American, Latino, Appalachian, disabled or gay and lesbian youth.
- An “intervention” level of care, which would come after prevention and before treatment, does not exist.
- Treatment programs are not geared toward those adolescent clients with low literacy rates.
- Family counseling does not occur as frequently as it needs to because it is not Medicaid reimburseable.
- Youth with both mental health and substance abuse issues are treated differently depending on which “door” they enter the system because funding streams for alcohol/ drug addiction, and mental health services are separate.
While each of these barriers is significant, there is a wide array of groups and individuals who are willing and ready to collaborate to address them. As part of the $1.2 million grant, ODADAS has established an Adolescent Advisory Network made up of public and private state and local agencies, associations, providers and family members who share interest in fostering a continuum of prevention and treatment services. Once the data from the surveys is available, this Network will be responsible for helping the state to develop a plan to provide effective, accessible, and affordable substance abuse treatment for youth and their families.
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