Multidimensional Family Therapy: Help for Teenage Drug Users

Multidimensional Family Therapy: Help For Teenage Drug Users
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It might be challenging for teenagers to distinguish between wise and foolish decisions. The use of drugs by teenagers is virtually always a mistake.

Teenagers are exposed to a variety of fresh options and perspectives in their quest for independence, which puts the morals their parents instilled in them to the test. While some teenagers may choose to express their newly found independence through music, relationships, and fashion choices, others opt for more harmful strategies and turn to drugs or alcohol.

Drug-using teenagers frequently struggle with keeping friendships with their peers, getting excellent grades in school, and learning how to solve problems.

While some kids use drugs to blend in with their peers, others use them as a coping technique for stressful life events or circumstances they feel powerless to change. In any case, drug use is a risky path for teenagers that frequently has repercussions that last well into adolescence.

Multidimensional Family Therapy: Help for Teenage Drug Users

Teenage drug usage is influenced by a number of factors, including personal, social, and familial issues. Therapists strive to help kids develop problem-solving skills and encourage anti-drug attitudes by looking at a teen’s personality, relationship with their family, and relationship with their peers.

In order to comprehend the family’s attitude against drug use and the teen’s attitude toward drug use, therapy sessions are split between meetings with family members and meetings with the particular teen.

The therapist works with the teen to set goals during the first stage of Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT), such as creating a peer group of non-deviants, encouraging better social behaviour with nonusers, and reestablishing a relationship between the teen and parents.

The objectives set forth in the first stage of MDFT are promoted in the second stage. The therapist helps the teen develop new communication skills to convey thoughts and emotions throughout individual sessions, including drug-refusal strategies. The therapist talks about new problem-solving methods to replace drug use if the teen is using drugs as a coping mechanism for life’s difficulties.

One of the biggest factors affecting a teen’s perception of drug usage is familial relationships. Teenagers who are closer to their parents are less likely to use drugs or act dishonestly.

The programme educates parents on many methods of connecting with their teenagers, such as expressing concern for their development and speaking out against drug usage.

According to a research by Howard A. Liddle and colleagues, MDFT has shown to be a successful strategy for combating teenage drug use since it addresses the individual teen and his or her family.

Liddle divided 182 clinically assigned drug-using adolescents into three different treatment groups in the article “Multidimensional Family Therapy for Adolescent Drug Abuse: Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial,” which was published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

According to the study’s findings, teenagers who received MDFT had the most dramatic drops in drug use as well as enhanced social, academic, and family functioning. In general, 42% of young people who received MDFT treatment reported a significant decrease in drug use, compared to 25% of AGT users and 32% of MEI users.

In addition, those who had MDFT reported improving their grades as a result of the therapy. Only 25% of patients receiving MDFT at the outset of treatment reported having a C average or better; however, by the end of treatment, nearly 76% of patients had C averages or better.

According to Liddle, the effectiveness of MDFT comes in its capacity to mend broken family bonds while also attending to the teen’s own issues.

Ask for help

Since there are typically underlying causes for teen drug use, psychological assistance is frequently needed throughout the healing process. The goal of substance abuse counsellors and therapists is to assist young people in overcoming addiction and the traumatic experiences that brought them to abuse.

Asking for help is important if you want to have a better tomorrow.

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