The way Substance Use Disorder Prevention should work is
you get to decide your future at a young age …
Substance use/mental health disorders can have a powerful effect on the health of individuals, their families, and their communities. Why do we wait to educate or intervene on someone’s life until consequences are experienced, families broken, lives are devasted? It doesn’t have to be that way.
Substance Use Disorders CAN be prevented but it takes ALL OF US understanding and supporting the facts and changing the social norms that today supports that “all teens experiment, it’s a right-of-passage, and they will grow out of it.” This is NOT the truth and it’s time that our communities get the information necessary to support our youth in substance use prevention.
Preventing substance use problems in children, adolescents, and young adults are critical to Americans’ behavioral and physical health. If communities and families can intervene early, behavioral health disorders might be prevented, or symptoms can be mitigated.
… which means, delaying drug/alcohol use significantly increases a young persons chances of not developing Substance Use Disorders each year they can delay.
a new Initiative
We believe prevention is the Cure, but until prevention education and awareness becomes commonplace, prevention needs to be knowing where to go for help. That is why CLA was part of bringing two first of their kind youth recovery initiatives to Oregon. The first is an Alternative Peer Group, Madrona Families. The second is a recovery high school Harmony Academy. Both initiatives support youth who would like a place where hope and healing are not only possible but real.
We were told to take the keys, and we did. Now there is more to the story…
This program brings awareness to the local conditions around underage drinking to our community – to leaders, parents, and youth – and sends a message that parents who provide alcohol to teenagers do so at great risk to our community. Taking the keys was a start but understanding that substance abuse/substance use disorder (SUD) for 9 out of 10 of people in recovery started when they were teenagers. Many different factors act together to affect a person’s risk for SUD.
News, Stats, Facts, Laws, and Trends seen in Oregon
Where does Oregon rank in the country with regard to substance (drug/alcohol) use – looking at the problem areas?
Substance use disorder and many mental health concerns are insidious – they proceed in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects many life-altering. So in the same incremental way, it appears there is not a quick fix or solution to substance use/mental health disorders.
Substance use/mental health disorders aren’t an adult or youth problem it’s a human problem. It’s complicated and important that communities come together to bring awareness and an understanding to what prevention, intervention, acute treatment needs, and aftercare/recovery could look like in communities where individuals and families feel safe to share their experiences and receive support.