What Factors can Cause Substance Abuse Addiction in Children

More and more children nowadays are falling prey to substance abuse, and this is happening all around us. In such circumstances, it is extremely vital that we understand what factors cause such drug and alcohol abuse situations in young minds.
That will help us a lot in constructing suitable substance abuse addiction treatment measures at a societal, national and even at a global level.Peer Pressure
Accessibility to the drug from friends is the strongest factor influencing drug addiction in children and young adults. If there is already a friend who abuses drugs, then it doesn’t take much time for an impressible kid to try it out too. There are also tendencies in kids that make them do just as the people around them are doing, because this is a nonjudgmental phase of their lives when they think what’s happening in the surroundings is the most correct thing to be done.
Family Pressure
You wouldn’t think this would be possible, but there are a lot of children that are pushed to the brink by their families. One example would be when parents overly coax their children for academic brilliance. When the kids fail to achieve that expected state, they become depressed. This is a very vulnerable phase in children where they may resort to other substances to get their emotional release.
Psychological Make-up of the Child
Some children are psychologically vulnerable to substance abuse. These are the kids who want to prove something to others, who have an attention-grabbing personality, or contrarily want to blend with the surroundings as much as possible. Children with reticent tendencies try to seek their solace in some kind of substance abuse.
Genetic Propensity
If there is a parent who was into substance abuse, especially the mother when she was lactating, then the child already has immunity towards the drug since childhood. Though this has not been studied yet, such transmission of the substance from mother to child could lead to urges in the child for that very substance at a later date.
Posted: May 1st, 2008 under Substance Abuse, Substance Addiction.
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