Addictive Behavior of Teenagers - Research Paper Example

 Addictive Behavior of Teenagers Introduction The negative tendency in the society development is reflected in the crisis of the family institute leveling the moral values and moral norms. The result is the increasing number of social orphans, child neglect, and delinquency. Now such item as addictive or deviant behavior has became widely used in the fields of pedagogy and psychology. It is important to find the main reasons of such behavior of teenagers, the methods of diagnostic and treatment of addictive behavior. It is a well-known fact that a great number of negative factors influence the development of young people that can cause social divergence. Thus, the importance of struggle is obvious. Such struggle includes early and correct diagnostic prevention and correction of deviant behavior. It is important to understand the reasons of such behavior and determine why young people tend to manifest the worthiest features of humans. Such phenomena as antisocial youth cultures, teen-age drug addiction, alcoholism, crimes affect greatly the development of young individuals and these factors can make teens become a part of the high-risk social group. The divergence from norms is closely connected to the environment, mass media, social environment, family life and the upbringing. The issue is worth-considering and it is very relevant, thus the given paper will discuss the methods of prevention, diagnosis and finally the correction of addictive behavior of teenagers. Prevention The addictive behavior prevention system in the modern conditions should take into account the existing positive experience as well as new demands or requirements of the society. It is essential to mention that early preventive measures can be realized by means of imposing certain restrictions, for example, the ban for pornographic movies and titles, selling alcohol drinks to kids and juniors, as far as by means of proper legal and pedagogical activity. Psychologists define the basic preventive measures as the following: a) providing affective participation of family. This measure implies providing help for families, which have financial difficulties. Also it is necessary to provide the support for families with the teens suffering from moral and material consequences of parents’ unemployment or forced changing the workplaces. The families must be aware about their duties and responsibilities connected with upbringing teens. The rights of teens in families should be protected and the negative influence should be suppressed; b) creating perspectives for teens with the physical and mental anomalies. There should be special institutions for social, medical and psychological adaptation of teens in order to prevent the addictive behavior; c) improving the work of educational institutions. It is connected with the important role school should play in the life of teens. The task of teachers should be not only to teach, but to communicate with teens and their parents. It is also essential to increase the level of teachers’ qualifications in order to make them able to establish trusting relations with their students; d) promoting the activity of the bodies that offer jobs and adaptation for those teens that do not continue their study for this or that reason. In the modern conditions it is of a paramount importance to provide teens with a job in they want to get it. The task of psychologists is to trace the life of such teens and support them; e) promoting the activity of organizations, which are responsible for organizing special activities for teens during their spare time. The goals of such activity should be classified in accordance with the situation in teens’ families. Special attention should be paid to the activities of children from the unhappy families; f) providing social defense and aid services for family and teenagers. The number of territorial centers of social rehabilitations should be increased and their activity supervised. j) promoting the participation in the voluntary and social organizations, social movements, both local and international (Lebow et al, 2006). Diagnosis It is essential to define the most appropriate and correct methods of addictive behavior diagnostic. Addictive behavior among teens is the urgent topic for discussions. So, its diagnostic is the burning issue for a great number of psychologists. The main methods of diagnostic are defined as follows: a) the assessment of the teen’s act by his or her parents, teachers and relatives (it could be interview, talk or questionnaire); b) the assessment of the behavior by the child itself; c) the analysis of psycho-pedagogical characteristics, problematic situations, teen’s performance. The assessment given by the relatives can differ much from the assessment provided by the child. Here the psychologists have to determine, if the problem really exists. In some cases relatives tend to exaggerate the divergence in behavior of their children and the tests show that a child is developing normally without serious risk. There are also cases when the assessment of relatives and especially teachers is very positive and they define the behavior of a child as normal, but the questionnaire reveals serious divergence. The task of the psychologists is to make the right diagnosis in the early stage (West, 2006). It was proved by many scientists that deviant behavior of teens is inherent personal development mechanism. Teenage period is the most difficult in the life of every person, moreover, teenagers usually do not have their own opinion and are susceptible to irrelevant influence. Deviant behavior can be called natural for teenagers as they are inclined to such behavior. Early diagnostic of addictive behavior is crucial. Thus, it becomes also important to classify children into groups. With such classification the treatment and the preventive measures for such children will be more effective and bring better results. Psychologists propose simple classification of the children with the addictive behavior that consists of two main groups. The first group includes children with the socialized forms of addictive or deviant behavior, who do not suffer from emotional disorders and who easy addict to the social norms of the groups they belong to. The second group includes children with antisocialized deviant behavior, who have difficult relations with other children, family and teachers and suffer from serious emotional disorder that results in negativism, aggressiveness, rudeness and revengefulness. Such classification is essential to be implemented after the diagnosis is made (Moos, 2006). Correction The correction is usually divided into 3 types: primary (aimed at prevention of illness development), secondary (aimed at illness development blocking), and tertiary (the prevention of complications). It is obvious that for the treatment of deviant behavior of teenagers all the types of corrections can be applied. The primary correction of addictive behavior applies two main methods: a) the system of bans and punishments and b) instructing. The revealing of groups of risk among teenagers can be used as an aiding approach. The main stress is made on the primary verbal correction of addictive behavior of teenagers. This prescribes special lectures, which explain how alcohol and drugs can damage human organism. The practice showed that not all the teenagers value their health high and understand the degree of risk. Moreover, the great number of them has already crossed the borders and demonstrates addictive behavior. Here the secondary correction is applied and the methods are chosen depending on the results provided by diagnostic. For the teenagers who belongs to the first group and do not suffer from serious mental disorder, the constructive correction of addictive behavior is used. The main goal is the introduction of the alternative to the deviant behavior in the form of healthy way of life. The most preferable form of such correction is free discussion, asking and answering the questions. Here psychologist should do his best to involve teenagers into the discussion of the problem. His task is to comment upon the ideas, expose the myths, not to impose his own opinion trying to make teenagers understand the realities themselves as a result of free discussion. The results can be considered achieved, when young people realize that out life can offer various interesting things to do and there is no need to use drugs, to drink alcohol or to be completely focused on computer games (Orford et al, 2006). The second group of teenagers is more difficult to deal with as it contains not only teenagers who simply appear under bad influence or decided to prove that they are adult. Those who are included into the second group have very difficult situations in their life. As Gifford & Humphreys state “addictive behavior occurs within a social context, which can serve as a risk or protective factor. Social contexts and individuals influence one another” (Gifford & Humphreys, 2007, p.358) Such situations become the cause of emotional disorders, which in their turn becomes the reason of addiction. Such teenagers need urgent help of not only medical psychologists, but they may also need the help of narcologists and psychiatrists. The approach to the treatment of such patients should be complex. The tertiary type of correction of addictive behavior prescribes the prevention of complications. Here we also need to work with two groups separately. The most important method is regular preventive therapy that includes special training in the first group and training combined with medical help in the second. The essential help can be provided by special trainings directed on the development of the types of behavior in the conditions of difficult life situations, the development of skills of so-called communicative competency. Such trainings will help develop the feeling of self-assurance and acquire the skills of overcoming difficult life situations. “Addiction involves dynamic adaptations occurring at multiple levels that are influenced by a variety of contexts including but not limited to treatment environments. If we want to improve our understanding of addiction and recovery, we should examine these processes directly. Psychological science is well suited for this endeavor” (Gifford & Humphreys, 2007, p.358) Conclusion The conclusion can be made that nowadays the addictive behavior among teens is a real problem. Despite the fact that there are different methods of diagnostic, prevention and treatment of deviant behavior, it still deserves attention. And the best way to struggle with it is to pay attention to the roots of the problem. Many psychological problems are acquired in the childhood, thus the behavior of teenagers should be paid special attention to. The success in the correction of addictive behavior can be achieved only by the effective combination of the work of all the specialists on the basis of the program of prevention and correction of teenage deviant behavior. The way of life significantly determines the way of behavior including addictive. Constructive correction of deviant behavior of teenagers should develop the new way of life – without addiction. Personal application The research helped me understand that the issue I chose for my research paper is really worth-discussing. I realized the real importance of providing teenagers with necessary attention and help. In my practice I would like to deal with such patients in order to use the acquired knowledge in practice as far as develop new effective methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of addictive behavior. The research made me understand that the early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of the addictive or deviant behavior are very important and scientists from such spheres as medical psychology and pedagogy do their best to determine the best methods. Fortunately, the researches, which were held by the experts, provided psychologists with the number of methods of detection, treatment and prevention of addictive behavior. However, further research is needed in order to find the new ways, which would help such people. I also realized that childhood is a very important period and teenage period is the most difficult. Thus, psychologists should pay special attention to their work with children and teenagers to reveal the problems and help learn how to overcome them. If the problem is revealed on time, the treatment of addictive behavior will bring very good results. In order to reveal the problems, the serious social work should be conducted in the society. In the modern society, where the religion is valued high, some notions that remind us about the harm of the addictive or deviant behavior can be also found in the Bible. The Bible provides an interesting explanation of such untypical manner of human behavior. It is stated that thoughts had an enormous power; people could control their lives by means of thoughts and due to them. It is also said that fear and pleasure are those forces that can capture human mind. Thus, people should control their thoughts and emotions in order to defend their lives. By following the Law of God one is able to understand the laws of psychology and find the best solutions for the most complicated problems. If the solutions are found, addictive behavior can be considered prevented or corrected. References Gifford, E. & Humphreys, K. (2007). The psychological science of addiction. Society for the Study of Addiction Lebow J., Kelly J., Knobloch-Fedders L. (2006). Moos R. Substance use disorders: the influence of therapist, family, and peer relationships on treatment process and outcome. In: Beutler L., Castonguay L., editors. Principles of Therapeutic Change ThatWork. New York: Oxford University Press; Moos R. (2006).Social contexts and substance use. In: Miller W., Carroll K., editors. Rethinking, Substance Abuse: What the Science Shows and What We Should Do About It. New York: Guilford Press; 182–200. Orford J., Hodgson R., Copello A., John B., Smith M., Black R. (2006). The clients’ perspective on change during treatment for an alcohol problem: qualitative analysis of follow-up interviews in the UK Alcohol Treatment Trial. Addiction, 2006; 101: 60–8. West R. (2006). Theory of Addiction. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Read More