Resilience in Young Adults: Protective Factors Against Substance Abuse

This paper explores the protective factors that enhance resilience in young adults who are victims of substance abuse. It identifies individual strengths, family-oriented help, and community engagement as key protective factors. The review analyzes three articles, each focusing on one of these factors: motivational interviewing as an individual strength, brief strategic family therapy as a family-centered approach, and community reinforcement as a community engagement strategy. While each factor shows promise, the review concludes that a comprehensive recovery program integrating all protective factors is needed. Future research should focus on the cumulative impact of these factors using randomized controlled trials to assess their combined effectiveness in overcoming substance abuse among adolescents. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
Topic: PSYCHOLOGY
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Part 3:
Protective factors that increase resilience in young adult victims of substance abuse:
Resilience can be defined as the ability to withstand any difficulty or challenge
experienced by the individual. Resilience is developed with the assistance of the protective
factors that help an individual overcome the challenges smoothly and successfully. In this
case, the target group had been chosen to be the young adults, as the impact of substance
abuse is the greatest for the adolescents and young adults as well (Wu et al., 2015). There is a
variety of contributing factors that contribute to the issue including peer pressure, past history
of abuse in the childhood, negative or violent parenting environment, occupational issues,
and lastly, discrimination. I have chosen three articles for the research which emphasizes on
building resilience in the young adults that are under a huge impact of substance abuse and
addiction. At least 23% of the student population of the nation which comes about 219,000
students have been reported to be sold drugs and have consumed drugs in the past year,
which indicates at the alarming and frightening situation that young adults are at, especially
with the recent legalization of medical marijuana (Teenchallenge.ca, 2019). Hence the target
population has been chosen for the study.
There are various protective factors that help the target population develop resilience
for overcoming the irresistible pull of substance abuse (Fatseas et al., 2015). The most
notable protective factors which helps the target population develop resilience includes
individual strength, family oriented help and community engagement. Hence, the research
studies that have been chosen for review in this part of the paper will address each of the
identified protective factors. The first article addresses how a one to one counselling and
motivational interview can act as notable strength in this case. The article by Li et al. (2016)
discusses the fact motivational interview can be of extreme benefit for the target population

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in overcoming the addiction to psychoactive substances and re-join their original lifestyle.
The research methodology chosen for this research study by the authors is a systematic
review, which suits the purpose and the research question effectively, to explore the evidence
for MI effectiveness in adolescents. Considering the sampling for the study, 184 studies had
been initially identified through the database search, which was screened and filtered through
the inclusion and exclusion criteria. After the thorough screening 10 studies had been chosen
for the meta analysis (Li et al. 2016). The authors of the article assessed whether or not they
can assess the effectiveness of the motivational interviewing can act as a protective factor for
the individual skills of the victims and help them cease substance abuse. This level 1
evidence performed a systematic review coupled with a meta-analysis to assess the existing
data on the effectiveness of the intervention. The data findings concluded the fact that even
though motivational interviewing on its own is not efficient in helping adolescents overcome
substance abuse, although it undoubtedly is a technique which helps influence the intention
for the target population to substance abuse or addiction.
The second article focuses on the second protective factor, which in this case is the
family or family centred care. Robbins et al. (2011) has attempted to assess the impact of
brief strategic family therapy or BSFT approach on the ability of overcoming the pull of
substance abuse from the adolescents in the randomized control trial study. The purpose of
study had been to determine the effectiveness of brief strategic family therapy for which they
have incorporated the randomized control trial, which addresses the research questions
effectively. The sampling of the research study had been from multiple cultural backgrounds
involving 480 total participants, 213 Hispanic, 148 White, and 110 Black. Along with that
sampling for the agency therapists who provided either TAU or BSFT services to the
participants, involving 49 therapists (Robbins et al. 2011). The data findings suggest that
there is positive factor of the family oriented functioning approach helps in improving

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outcome. Although, on its own when tested against the conventional treatment it is not
capable of overcoming substance abuse, but it surely acts as a strong protective factor, and
can help improve engagement, retention, and parent-reported family functioning with
adolescents, especially for the culturally diverse backgrounds. The last paper is by Roozen,
De Waart and Van Der Kroft (2010) which has examined the impact of community re-
enforcement in order to improve resilience in the adolescents and help them overcome the
substance addiction. This had been another research study which incorporated a systematic
review study design which addressed the exact research questions effectively, the study
consisted of a total sample of 264 CSOs. This systematic review revealed the fact that
community re-enforcement along with family training or CRAFT is superior in engaging
treatment‐resistant substance‐abusing individuals and developing resilience among the
adolescents. Hence, from the research it can be stated that each of the protective factors have
their own perks and although they are not sufficient as standalone treatment options, they can
be extremely helpful when used in conjecture.
Part 4:
All the three articles helped in discovering the individual impact of each of the
protective factor, individual skills, family centred approach, and community engagement. The
existing evidence on the resilience and protective factors associated with building resilience
among the target populations, the evidence is not sufficient as the literature is mostly of a
secondary research design, which lacks the transferability, viability, and accuracy of the data.
There is need for robust primary research on the topic as well. Moreover, the impact of the
each protective factor is evidenced individually, although there is lack of a cumulative
impact, designing a recovery program involving all of the protective factors (Stockings et al.,
2016). Hence, based on the analysis, the research question for future research has to be what

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the cumulative impact of individual counselling is, family centred approach, and community
re-enforcement in overcoming the substance abuse in adolescents?
This research question can be addressed taking assistance of a randomized controlled
trial, using a blinding approach and integrate the interventions in different combinations to
assess the impact in enhancing resilience and improving ideation of uncontrolled
psychoactive substance consumption. The different groups should have participants that are
randomly assigned to different groups and each group should be individually analysed and
assessed in a comparative manner to judge the efficacy of the program. The data findings
should be statistically analysed and discussion should be clearly illustrated to discuss the
findings and their implications in detail, which can be provided by a robust RCT study
design.

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References:
Fatseas, M., Serre, F., Alexandre, J. M., Debrabant, R., Auriacombe, M., & Swendsen, J.
(2015). Craving and substance use among patients with alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or
heroin addiction: A comparison of substance‐and person‐specific
cues. Addiction, 110(6), 1035-1042.
Hall, W. D., Patton, G., Stockings, E., Weier, M., Lynskey, M., Morley, K. I., & Degenhardt,
L. (2016). Why young people's substance use matters for global health. The Lancet
Psychiatry, 3(3), 265-279.
Li, L., Zhu, S., Tse, N., Tse, S., & Wong, P. (2016). Effectiveness of motivational
interviewing to reduce illicit drug use in adolescents: A systematic review and meta‐
analysis. Addiction, 111(5), 795-805.
Liddle, H. A. (2010). Treating adolescent substance abuse using multidimensional family
therapy.
Robbins, M. S., Feaster, D. J., Horigian, V. E., Rohrbaugh, M., Shoham, V., Bachrach, K., ...
& Vandermark, N. (2011). Brief strategic family therapy versus treatment as usual:
Results of a multisite randomized trial for substance using adolescents. Journal of
consulting and clinical psychology, 79(6), 713.
Roozen, H. G., De Waart, R., & Van Der Kroft, P. (2010). Community reinforcement and
family training: An effective option to engage treatment‐resistant substance‐abusing
individuals in treatment. Addiction, 105(10), 1729-1738.

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Stockings, E., Hall, W. D., Lynskey, M., Morley, K. I., Reavley, N., Strang, J., ... &
Degenhardt, L. (2016). Prevention, early intervention, harm reduction, and treatment
of substance use in young people. The Lancet Psychiatry, 3(3), 280-296.
Teenchallenge.ca. (2019). Canadian Drug Crisis - Teen Challenge Canada. [online]
Available at: https://www.teenchallenge.ca/get-help/canadian-drug-crisis [Accessed
14 Feb. 2019].
Wu, L. T., Swartz, M. S., Brady, K. T., Hoyle, R. H., & Workgroup, N. A. (2015). Perceived
cannabis use norms and cannabis use among adolescents in the United States. Journal
of psychiatric research, 64, 79-87.