Teen Substance Abuse and Other Mental Health Concerns
When teenagers chronically use drugs to alleviate feelings of depression and anxiety, they can experience short-term relief. Unfortunately, however, they will also experience brain changes, which in the long run will worsen the very psychiatric symptoms that were initially alleviated by drug and alcohol use.
-Levine, M., p.25
Substance use problems rarely occur in isolation. Research has consistently shown that most adolescents who develop a substance abuse problem also suffer from one or more additional mental health concerns, such as, but not limited to, depression or anxiety. It is not easy to know what is causing what, or which came first. While it is important to manage the desire to self-medicate through the use of drugs alcohol, which may require a program such as Alcoholics Anonymous, it is equally important that teens explore through therapy the underlying issues that are being expressed through drug and alcohol use. In some cases, medications, particularly anti-depressants, will need to be a part of an effective treatment program, but one needs to ask what is it that is causing the depression, or anxiety? Biological factors may well be part of the problem, but biological solutions (medications) can only be part of a real solution.
