Child Psychology Essay, Research Paper

This paper is intended to explore the childhood psychological disorders associated with drug use. The paper will mention the risk and protective factors associated with drug use and the disorders they may cause. Also, the research proposal will explore the perceptions that adolescents have about substance abuse prevention programs.

Drug addiction afflicts many adolescents in the United States. Moreover, the occasional or recreational adolescent drug user is more common than most Americans think. This literature review and research proposal is intended to: (1) summarize adolescents? perceptions and the effectiveness of drug prevention programs (a protective factor) and (2) propose a research to examine the correlation between drug prevention programs and the rate of psychopathology in adolescents.

Increase in drug use by school-aged children has led to the enactment of the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act in order to enhance drug education prevention programs. In addition, there is conflicting evidence in the literature regarding the effectiveness of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.), one of the more famous drug prevention programs. Therefore, the research proposal will attempt to clarify the effectiveness of D.A.R.E., which is a protective factor for several childhood psychological disorders. Drug use during adolescence is a risk factor and predictor for several psychological disorders. The effectiveness of D.A.R.E., and other drug prevention programs, is important to the field of child and family child psychopathology because they help to prevent and understand some disorders.

The D.A.R.E. program has been described as a ?psychosocial? approach to drug prevention. The sessions include training for personal, social, and resistance skills.

The articles pertaining to D.A.R.E. essentially state that program has good short-term results but less successful long-term results

In the first article by Rosenbaum (1999), the subjects he studied were in the fifth and sixth grades, about eleven and twelve years old. The six year longitudinal study was illustrates how the effectiveness of D.A.R.E. can predict the

RESEARCH DESIGN

QUESTION: What are adolescents? perceptions of substance abuse programs and strategies?

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With growing awareness that even very young children are at risk of drug and alcohol