Healthcare: Substance Abuse in Teenagers

Running head: HEALTHCARE
Healthcare
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Usage as well as abuse of alcohol and drugs by teenager have become highly common
and have the potential to have serious consequences. According to statistics, within the age range
from 15 years to 24 years, 50 percent of the deaths from homicides, accidents or suicide involves
drugs and alcohol (Newton et al., 2016). Along with this the abuse of alcohol and drugs also
contributes to physical as well as sexual harassment like rape and sexual assault. Possible stages
of teenage experience with alcohol as well as drugs are comprised of experimentation, regular
usage, abuse and dependency. If seen from an evolutionary perspective, it can be clearly
understand that that the significance of alcohol and drug abuse is three fold in nature, namely,
biology, psychology and social influence. All the three impacts are adverse in nature (Williams
et al., 2015). Repeated as well as regular recreational usage of drug and alcohol can lead to issues
like anxiety and depression. When it comes to the biological impact of drugs on a human body,
some of the major impact includes loosing brain and heart and profound metabolic alteration.
Considering the significance of the issue, it is highly crucial to implement schemes of assistance
for identification, counseling, treatment as well as rehabilitation of the addicts with the help of
voluntary resources like non government organization as well as TUA staff service. In order to
design an effective drug and alcohol abuse plan, a project will be designed (Curcio, Knott &
Mak, 2015). The chief stakeholder of the mentioned project includes the community partners
who are the students of the Torrens University Australia and the Alcohol and drug foundation.
(Berends, Jones & Andrews, 2016). Their chief role will be to provide paid voluntary services to
the community members affected with drug and alcohol abuse. The alcohol and drug foundation
is a nongovernmental organization that works for preventing harms associated with alcohol and
drug abuse. The organization takes community led actions to provide help the healthcare service

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users get cured from both physical as well as physiological disease that has taken place for
overconsumption of alcohol and drugs.
Issue Description
Substance abuse that includes alcoholism opiate dependence or abuse of any substance
that has the potential to impose deleterious physiological as well as social effects is considered to
be a culture and public health issue affecting several millions of people in Australia. Along with
the individual who is directly affected, this disease also affects a large segment of population and
is comprised of a number of legal, social as well as health issues. According to Lubman et al.,
(2017), prejudice, misinformation contrary to the scientific advances in the field of substance
abuse has the potential to hinder the development of preventive early treatment programs.
According to WHO, approximately 9.3 percent of the adolescents between the age ranging from
12 years to 15 years are engaged in consumption of alcohol (Grigsby et al., 2016). When it
comes to drug, the percentage of male abusers between the age ranges of 12-17 is about 13.5
percent. The percentage is 8.2 for female alcohol and drug abusers.
Needs Assessment
In this section identification of the needs associated with the drug and alcohol abuse in
Australia that would enable the Torrens University staffs to use their volunteering day to engage
with the Alcohol and Drug Foundation will be performed. In Australia, it will be found that more
than 69.3 percent of the total percentage of people conducting drug and alcohol abuse is
performed by teenagers (Scholes-Balog et al., 2015). More than one-quarter of Australian
teenagers aged 16 to17 years put themselves at risk for short-term alcohol-related harm at least
once a month, and 17% use an illicit drug at least once a year. The chief needs that are detected

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within the Australian community in order to deal with alcohol and drug abuse are provision of
appropriate healthcare service, low cost or cost free rehabilitation centers, physiological
counseling facilities and lack of appropriate measures to enhance the awareness of the people. It
will be found that majority of the drug and alcohol abusers in Australia, specially, the teenagers
lacks the knowledge of how adversely the evil practice an impose negative impact n their health.
Not only this, it will be detected that amongst the drug and alcohol abusers more than 53 percent
are indigenous people and teenagers who lacks the financial stability to invest on expensive
rehabilitation centers (Grigsby et al., 2016). Hence cost free or low cost rehabilitation centers
and physiological counseling is another major requirement for elimination of the drug and
alcohol abuse.
The project will take place in Brisbane. In order to select samples for the drug and
alcohol prevention project, the NUA staffs will conduct a survey. A non probability sampling
method will be used in order to conduct the survey. Data will be collected from households,
healthcare centers as well as high schools and colleges of the mentioned region. A set of
questionnaires to analyze whether the basic needs to prevent substance abuse is provided or not
will be developed. The collected survey will be examined and analyzed with the quantitative
analysis method. The TUA staffs will be conducting the procedure along with the help of the
members of the Alcohol and drug foundation. He chief stakeholders of the project include the
Alcohol and drug Foundation organization along with the interested students participating in the
project. Both face to face communication as well as virtual communication through email will be
used. The major potential challenges that may be faced by the TUA staffs while collecting data
for need analysis includes, lack of cooperation of the data collection sources and lack of
willingness of the participants to participates.