Youth & Drugs and Mental Health: A Resource for Professionals

This is a resource for people who work with youth, but is intended primarily for service providers who work in settings dealing with youth substance use and mental health treatment.

The resource provides up-to-date information about addressing substance use among young people - including doing so in the context of other mental health problems that they may be experiencing.

Our knowledge of treatment for young people with substance use and other mental health problems is at an early stage of development. Despite the need for comprehensive approaches, there currently is relatively little consensus about what works and does not work. Consequently, this resource draws upon available published information and integrates it with the advice of experts who work in addiction and mental health programs for youth.

This new resource replaces Youth & Drugs: An Education Package for Professionals (Addiction Research Foundation and Health and Welfare Canada, 1991) and has new information on:

• youth substance use and mental health
• screening and assessment
• integrated treatment and support
• cultural competency
• Motivational interviewing
• stages of change
• family involvement
• pharmacotherapy.

Part two of this resource is the treatment manual First Contact: A brief treatment for young substance users with mental health problems .

Depending on the setting in which you work, some of the information in this resource will be familiar to you, while other sections will be new. We encourage you to use the information that is most relevant to you to integrate your understanding of, and approach to treating young people with substance use and other mental health problems.

Excerpts from Youth & Drugs and Mental Health: A Resource for Professionals are available by following the links below:

Table of contents (PDF version only)

Chapter 1: An Overview of Youth Substance Use and Mental Health

• 1.1 Adolescent development, substance use and mental health
• 1.2 Adolescent substance use
• 1.3 Adolescent mental health
• 1.4 Adolescent concurrent disorders
• 1.5 The relationship between substance use and mental health problems
• 1.6 The most common concurrent mental health problems
• PDF version of Chapter 1

First Contact:  A Brief Treatment For Young Substance Users With Mental Health Problems

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Giving personalized feedback at assessment
• Session 1: The decision to change
• Session 2: Triggers, consequences and alternatives
• Session 3: Things that are important to me
• Session 4: Stages of Change
• Art therapy modality
• Activity modality
• PDF version of First Contact

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