Substance use among children and adolescents

Substance Use among Children and Adolescents provides the most complete picture yet of important theoretical, empirical, and clinical trends in substance exposure and use and their impact upon the young. Ann Marie and Louis Pagliaro have assembled a vast body of information in a format that is easy to apply in clinical practice. Drawing upon their own clinical experiences and those of other experts from a variety of disciplines, the authors present practical advice and guidance on assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Practitioners will be particularly interested in those chapters dealing with assessment and treatment approaches and the use of the Mega Interactive Model of Substance Exposure and Use among Infants, Children, and Adolescents. Among the many crucial topics covered in depth are prenatal exposure to substances of abuse; patterns of substance exposure and use among infants, children, and adolescents; the effects of substance exposure and use on learning and memory; the relationship between substance exposure and use and various psychiatric disorders; violence, sexual abuse, and crime; contributing social and psychological factors such as divorce, cults, familial patterns of substance use, and suicide; the advantages and pitfalls of various prevention strategies; methods of clinically assessing the nature and extent of substance use; and the relative efficacy of current treatment methods. The book's helpful appendices provide abbreviations used in the text, a directory of major treatment centers, and generic, trade, and common names of frequently used substances of abuse.