Recent alcohol abuse statistics show that alcohol abuse among teens is increasing in the United States. What are some of the reasons for this? More than a few alcohol dependency authorities declare that liquor, wine, and beer advertisements produced by the media are a fundamental reason for the escalation of teen alcohol abuse.
Other alcohol dependency specialists state that the increase in youth alcohol abuse is due to the acceptability and ease of access of liquor, beer, and wine in our society.
Still other substance abuse consultants articulate that quite a few of our teenagers involve themselves in harmful drinking because of the increased anxiety that they experience.
From a somewhat different vantage point, since both parents in quite a few families work full or part-time, the lack of parental supervision clearly has to play a primary part in the proliferation of youth alcohol abuse. And as a final point, diverse alcohol addiction authorities argue that the expansion of youth alcohol abuse is due, in some degree, to our permissive society.
Excessive Drinking and Coping Skills Education
One element of teen alcohol abuse that seems to be somewhat incomplete in the alcohol abuse research results, on the other hand, is the paucity of educational programs that teach adolescents how to further develop their coping skills so that their risky drinking behavior is extensively reduced or eliminated.
More specifically, scientific research has made obvious the fact that there is an indirect correlation between poor coping skills and abusive drinking. Basically, this means that the more mediocre the coping skills, the higher the prevalence of alcohol abuse. To the degree that this is a valid allegation , why isn’t coping skills training a major part of the educational curriculum in all of our high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools?
A Society That Accentuates Adolescent Coping Skills
Let us construct a scenario for for the purpose of illumination. Let us imagine a society in which all individuals are trained how to achieve sound coping skills all the way from kindergarten up to and including the twelfth grade.
In such a society, when life gets demanding, people who are ”coping skills experts” will be able to respond in a more healthy and more productive way, as opposed to others who fail to apply their coping skills.
More explicitly, students who reveal superior coping skills will be more able to think clearly and engage in quality decision making as opposed to teens who, because they are deficient in quality coping skills, resort to the “quick fix” of abusive drinking, alcohol abuse, and teenage alcoholism.
What would happen in the above “ideal” society, what’s more, if teenagers not only got top shelf coping skills instruction but also got an exclusive education that highlighted the long term and short term unhealthy consequences associated with drug abuse and alcohol abuse? Emphasizing these types of drug and alcohol abuse facts, along with more highly developed coping skills instruction, it is emphasized, would help adolescents steer clear of the apparent charm correlated with underage drinking and, therefore, would substantially reduce the hazardous drinking behavior shown by teenagers in our country.
Adolescent Abusive Drinking: Room for Optimism, Hope, and Success and the Need for Dynamic Parenting and Leadership and Better Communication and Conflict Resolution in Our Relationships
There are positively scores of sound reasons why so many of our teenagers drink in a harmful manner. Such a complex subject matter, if hope, success, and optimism are to be realized, demands a thorough and more applicable preventative and educational response by our parents, politicians, students, and educators so that our teens can learn how to cope with life’s predicaments in a more fruitful and accountable manner rather than resorting to abusive drinking behavior to solve their difficulties. In a word, relevant leadership and parenting and more effective communication and conflict resolution are needed for such a complex problem such as teenage alcohol abuse.
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