Substance Abuse Prevention

Our efforts to develop environmental strategies have focused on the prevention of substance-impaired driving, including drunk and drugged driving. To this end, iRT has conducted research on the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and needs of prevention specialists concerned about the prevention of drugged driving in their communities. iRT has also created a website that consolidates information about drugged driving including measures for assessing the problem, state laws about drugged driving, and professional development courses for prevention specialists. Prevention specialists specifically reported a gap in programs that could be delivered directly to drivers to prepare them for driving safely. To address this need, iRT has developed Plan My Ride, an immersive, self-paced, research-based program to prevent impaired driving by teens and young adults.

From early childhood, youth are bombarded with media messages about substance use. Advertisements imply alcohol makes you attractive and popular, song lyrics boast about getting high, and fictional characters indulge in reckless behavior while rarely suffering consequences. Media literacy education (MLE)-based substance use prevention is designed to help youth fight back against these inaccurate depictions. By giving children the tools to critically analyze media, MLE subverts the influence of these unhealthy messages; youth will be skeptical of the ideas behind media messages, rather than taking them at face value. With the advent of social media, smartphones, “influencers,” and more, knowing how to navigate today’s media landscape is more important than ever. iRT has conducted rigorous studies utilizing media literacy education as a vehicle for substance abuse prevention, and reported that MLE is an evidence-based way to provide youth with healthy attitudes towards substance use and lifelong strategies for understanding the messages they see every day. 

Children’s self-regulatory abilities develop over time and the ability to successfully regulate one’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors has been associated with positive social and academic outcomes. Difficulties with self-regulation may put children and adolescents at risk for engaging in unhealthy behaviors, such as the use of alcohol or tobacco. The development of prevention programs that facilitate the growth of self-regulatory abilities in children is a focus of study at iRT. In fact, iRT has conducted studies of programs that teach children and adolescents about mindfulness and mindfulness practice with changing the mediators of substance abuse as a key goal. Practicing mindfulness on a daily basis can help children and adolescents to slow down and be more aware of their feelings or thoughts, and manage them in healthy ways when they are at home, school, or with others.

iRT also conducts research on social-emotional learning as a means of preventing substance abuse. The skills of selecting, making, and keeping prosocial friends, and reducing or eliminating affiliation with deviant peers are core to preventing substance use behaviors in children and adolescents. In fact, the conclusions from developmental theory, empirical longitudinal studies, and prevention trials concur that social influences are a primary factor in the initiation of drug using and abusing behaviors. Similarly, engaging in risky healthy behaviors such as aggression, delinquency and substance use are highly positively intercorrelated. In fact, criminal and drug “careers” are interrelated through mutual causation, and the onset of externalizing behavior problems tends to precede the onset of illicit drug use. Consistent with the mutual causation theory, prevention efforts need to address the multiple determinants of aggressive behavior and substance use in order to have a long-term preventive influence on either outcome. Successful development of social-emotional skills such as self-regulatory skills (e.g., behavioral inhibition, anger management), social cognitive skills (e.g., interpersonal problem solving), prosocial skills (e.g., sharing, empathy), and engagement in prosocial leisure activities can protect children against the development of impaired social relationships, aggression, and substance use. 

Mentoring typically refers to an adult, who is an old person or a more experience peer, (the mentor) who is engaged in a non-professional helping relationship with a young person or less experienced peer (the mentee). The goals of a mentoring relationship can include primarily establishing a long-term, trusted friendship, helping the mentee explore their interests or goals, or advocating on behalf of the mentee. Ineffective mentoring has been found to be a relationship of poor quality that ends prematurely. In fact, failed mentoring relationships that end earlier than expected are associated with increases in alcohol consumption among young adolescents. iRT conducts both basic and applied research to better understand the ways in which mentoring can effectively prevent substance abuse as well as training for mentors, staff, mentees, and parents/guardians to support the development of supportive, close, effective mentoring relationships, including training for mentors matched with mentees who are affected by substance abuse.

iRT’s large portfolio of rigorously evaluated preventive intervention programs and basic research are designed to delay onset of substance use and support asset-building to provide children, teens, and young adults with the skills they need to live a sober and healthy life.