Group Work with Youth: Substance Abuse and Peer Support

Group work with a particular population of youth

Part 1
Youth accounts for around one fifth of the world’s population. Youth are a part of adolescent
which means ‘to emerge’ or ‘achieve identity. ‘They are in a specific phase of life that
determines rapid physical growth as well as development in all aspects of reasons. Youth can
also be characterized by social and psychological changes as well as maturity, sexual
maturity, physical needs, experimentation, development of mental processes along with
moving on from the early socio-economic dependence towards more relative independence in
life (Van Ryzin et al., 2016).
One of the biggest issue that today’s youth are suffering from is substance abuse problem. It
could be said that the youthful substance use can be transitory, episodic or even experimental.
However, for certain group of youth it is also quite a serious and long‐lasting indicator for
upcoming problems. Number of research experiments has been conducted on animals in
order to address the sensitivity of youth’s mind to the alcohol or drugs. Most of the youth
start using substance abuse during their teen years (Dunne et al., 2017). The use of substance
in such early phase of life is associated with disruptive behaviours like oppositional disorders,
attention deficit disorder or ADD, conduct disorders, eating disorders and attention
deficit/hyperactivity disorder, popularly known as AD/HD (Papp et al., 2016). The most
common substance used and abused by the youth is alcohol. The use of alcohol is also
reflected on the troubling patterns among the youth. As per the reports, in the year 2001,
around 10.7 per cent of youth among the age group of 12 to 17 was reported to binge
consume alcohol in one month and around 2.5 per cent of youth was reported of heavy
drinking. Binge drinking is mainly consuming five or more drinks on the same occasion
while heavy drinking is consuming more than five drinks for at least five days in a week
(Hutton, 2016).
While dealing with substance abuse among youth, peer support is one of the most beneficial
group works for this issue (Carpenter et al., 2017).. It is a process of giving and receiving
nonprofessional or nonclinical assistance from various individuals that are suffering from
same conditions and circumstances. The peer group in case of substance abuse can be from
psychiatric, alcohol or other drug related problems (MacArthur et al., 2016). As per some
recent research studies, it has been subjected that there are some rise in the implementation of
alternative forms of peer support services in order to assist people in the recovery of
substance use disorders. However, often at times using peer support is not accepted as a valid

and formalizedcomponent of service. It is not separated as an empirically tested service in
helping insubstance use disorders, which makes it difficult for the researchers to fully
determine its effects. One of the biggest benefits and aspects of the peer supportservices in
case of substance abuse recovery is treatment of addiction.
The supports of the family for the group of youth that are suffering from problems related to
the substance use are equally important as the peer support group. This is also mainly because
the family of the abuser would be able to motivate the individual to strive for the goalto free
him from the bondage of alcohol or drugs. Constant motivation and encouragement are also a
major factor for the individual to leave the substance abuse. In many case the peer support
groups do not have to replace the requirements for any kind of formal treatments and
supervisory clinical guidance (Cieslik& Pollock, 2017). This is because the peer of the group
services does not have sufficient training in order to manage some sort of psychiatric
conditions and other high risk situations like these. The peer group support services still offer
a legible growth and development to the substance abuse treatment and provide appropriate
benefits to the individuals that are suffering from substance use disorders for a long time.
Another basic way to treat the youth suffering from alcohol abuse is application to family
therapy. Many treatment programmes have now started including family therapy support in
order to engage and retain the youths and to better their problems related to drug use. Few
other approaches which can be taken into consideration are Specific family therapy
approaches which include Brief Strategic Family Therapy and Multidimensional Family
Therapy (Ng& Weisz, 2016). Another strong strategy to help the individual youth to fight
their battle of substance abuse are moving the session for the therapy from clinic to a setting
in which they are more accustomed and comfortable. If the therapy sessions are conducted at
a familiar place for the youth, he is more likely to open their thoughts and share their issues
than the sessions which are conducted in the therapist’s office. The therapy sessions should
also be sensitive towards the school obligations along with extracurricular and social
activities taking place around the youth (Degenhardt et al., 2016).