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Adolescent Drug Rehab

Drug addiction and abuse is a rising problem amongst the youth population with kids as young as twelve starting use of hard addictive drugs like cocaine. In 2009 a report said 10% of youth had used illicit drugs in the month prior to the survey. This was a rise from 9.3% in 2008. In fact more than 60% of teenagers, from another survey, said that drugs were being sold, used or kept at their schools whilst 20% of 8th graders admitted to having used marijuana. Possibly the most disturbing statistic reports that 48.2% of 12th graders have used illicit drugs at least once in their lifetime, a figure that has been consistently rising over the past years. One such method of this is adolescent drug rehab. The majority of rehabilitation facilities traditionally were available for adults. With the rising problem of addiction and abuse in teenagers, adolescent drug rehab centers are creating programs specifically tailored to the youth demographic.

Adolescent drug rehabs can either be found as a program part of treatment center or it might be a rehabilitation facility that is exclusive to teens. Adolescent drug rehabs hold many similarities to other dug rehabs with common factors such as these:

Psycho-education: Adolescent drug rehabs, hold a high focus on educating patients. Psycho-education teaches the patients about the nature of their disease, the risks they face from continuing in their addiction and how best to tackle their disease on the outside. For adolescents this is a crucial issue as they may not necessarily fully understand the effect drugs can have on their health and life as a whole.

Therapy: Both adult and adolescent drug rehabs will have regular therapy sessions. Therapy comes in a variety of different forms, all of which are aimed at the identification of and processing of issues. Adolescent issues often differ from those of adult issues.

12 Step Meetings: Meetings are provided at both adult and adolescent rehabs. Though adolescent rehabs may take their patients to meetings with adults they will often also hold in-house meetings or find meetings with other adolescents.

Adolescent drug rehabs will also provide certain services not necessarily given by adult rehabilitation programs such as:

Schooling: The majority of adolescents who go to drug rehab will be missing school and general education by being at rehab. Because of this adolescent drug rehabs will often have classes so as not to hinder the patients on the outside when they return to school.

Family therapy: Although adult rehab centers offer family programs, there is often a much larger focus on family therapy for adolescents. Many adolescents use drugs due to distressing or chaotic family backgrounds; a form of escapism. Solving and fixing these family systems gives a better base for recovery post-rehab.

Adolescent therapy differs to adult therapy as adolescents often need to come to terms with facts adults accept such as ‘life isn’t always fair’, ‘ultimately there is no escape from pain life will throw at you’ and learning ‘I must take responsibility for my own actions.’ Adolescent therapy as a whole does need to be tackled from a different direction as adolescents may often be more rebellious and less co-operative than adults, as comes with their age and often the circumstances of being forced into rehab rather than going by choice (more common in adults).

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