Troubled Teens Resources

“…the people were different but their look was the same - missing teeth, sunken cheeks, white skin, pus-filled sores and sunken eyes.”

Teen crisis intervention has never been more urgent than the current multi-state anti-meth campaign.

The TV ads, billboards and videos highlight the radical devastation that meth administers to it’s addicts. There is no mercy with meth. Though heroin, cocaine, and crack are just as deadly, their decimating effects are not nearly so evident as those left by meth addiction.

“This one didn’t survive,” Holley said about one the addicts, pictured on the big screen.

Another woman’s face illuminated with an air of lifelessness to it, but she was actually alive and in the middle of a meth “crash” - which is a multi-day long period of rest after a long bender.

“This is day two … After I got the tube out her throat,” Holley said.

“Why does it have to be so ugly,” she asked, before explaining that addicts have “chains” around their “veins.”

Different rhymes peppered Holley’s anti-meth points.

“The high is a lie,” she told the students, because meth gives people a feeling of power and control, even though addicts lack those virtues, she said.

The percentage of high school-aged people using methamphetamine has dropped every year for 10 years, Holley told her audience.

But meth customers die, and their pushers move on to look for new clientele - like the students in Monday’s audience, Holley said.

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Teen crisis intervention directed at the scourge of underage drinking is an ongoing campaign for parents, schools and communities. What is undeniable, though parents do not quite grasp this, is the power of parental communication.

Believe it or not, your kids are listening to you. And they are watching you. So, if you are warning them about the dangers of alcohol and drugs, yet drink and medicate yourself, you might have a problem. If you aren’t meeting your teen’s friends, communicating with their parents, or making your rules crystal clear, you might have a problem. The parent who also tries to be their teenager’s friend, will fail at both. Teens want parents.

“Parents’ ability to influence whether their children drink is well documented and is consistent across racial and ethnic groups.Verbally expressing their disapproval of drinking, setting clear rules against drinking, consistently enforcing those rules and monitoring your child’s behavior all help to reduce the likelihood of underage drinking.”

See how you do on the following test, linked below.

• Tell your child that you disapprove of underage drinking?
• Monitor teens while they are in your home?
• Talk to your teen daily?
• Set a curfew and consistently enforce house rules?
• Inquire of another parent about a gathering or party to verify safe situations and supervised homes?
• Welcome telephone calls at your home verifying supervision of gatherings at your own home?
• Check levels of open alcohol beverages in your home?
• Attempt to meet your child’s friends and their parents as their environment changes?
• Call authorities or other parents to report unsafe situations, parties or gatherings?
• Help your child figure out how to handle risky situations with a plan of action?

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Probably the most effective teen crisis intervention is that which provides juveniles with a vision for the future and the training necessary to achieve that vision. And far better than the government underwriting the entire bill are those non-profit and corporate entities who provide the funding for programs for troubled teens in their respective communities.

Back Track in San Francisco is a good example.

“Through Back on Track, Simon and her team create collaborations with business and labor as well as the public sector. The focus is getting corporations and nonprofits to notice that there is a population of young people who want to work, but are harming themselves and their communities through low-level drug trade.

“I’ve been able to do some public education, along with (Harris), who’s really spearheading a lot of these conversations around the nation, that public safety is about providing opportunities for people to do the right thing,” she said. “It’s also about ensuring that there are consequences for folks who don’t.”

In addition to Back on Track, Simon runs the district attorney’s Changing the Odds, a summer employment and internship program for at-risk youth.”
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Some communities are blessed with program after program for troubled teens. Though it is unfortunate when a teen needs such a program, it is even more unfortunate if the community that they live in have none to offer. Parents would do well to offer support for those programs helping teenagers in their own communities. Teen drug abuse impacts the entire community through increased crime, pregnancies and broken lives.

Teen crisis intervention has become a familiar topic to the general public due to the popular A&E show, ‘Intervention’. And for most people, it is a drama that they would prefer to confine to the small screen. For those parents of teenagers caught up in teen drug abuse or alcoholism, the very idea of confronting their always sullen, often hostile teens is more than intimidating.

And it is if you go it alone. That is never advised. In fact, a great deal of counseling, talking, organizing and research goes into laying the groundwork for an intervention. The following example is an excerpt from one family’s intervention for their alcoholic father.

“Anyone who is close to the addicted person…can initiate an intervention. Typically, those involved will meet with a counselor to learn about their loved one’s addiction. Then they discuss how the addict’s behavior has affected them. This discussion helps everyone to focus on the consequences of addiction and not on judging or blaming the addicted person.
[…]
“First of all, we met for months with a social worker, Barry, who specialized in addiction counseling. We learned from him what alcoholism is all about. That’s really important, because it helped us understand what was going on with Dad.

“Then Barry got all of us to talk about how Dad’s alcoholism affected each of us. These stories helped us concentrate on what we wanted Dad to understand about what his alcoholism was doing to us. Barry explained that it was important that the intervention wouldn’t put Dad on the defensive. It wasn’t about calling Dad a bad person, it was just talking about how the alcoholism had affected the family.”
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Some school districts are dead serious about teen crisis intervention in the area of teen alcohol consumption. Police are tired of scraping bodies off the road and parents are fed up coming home to trashed homes where unauthorized teen parties have spun out of control.

“Recent suburban drinking parties attracted 70 teens on Grand Island, another 34 in Evans and 22 in Clarence. Eight students in Sloan showed up drunk at a homecoming dance.

Those four incidents all occurred over two weekends.

Once again, alarm bells are ringing across the region about the prevalence of underage drinking.

The alarm has sounded many times over the years, but now the public is starting to learn what educators and advocates for alcohol treatment have been shouting for years:

Teen drinking, always a serious problem, is getting worse.

“They’re drinking younger, they’re drinking more, and they’re drinking for the purpose of getting drunk…”

Schools have formulated a three-pronged plan. All athletes sign a contract agreeing to a code of conduct. Many school districts never enforce the agreements. This school did - over 3 dozen athletes will not finish their season.

“I think the bottom line from youngsters who watch the situation is ‘Oh my gosh, they’re serious. The school district does what they say they’re going to do…”
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They are demanding compliance from parents, even going so far as to mandate that they attend an alcohol-ed class if they want their teenager to be granted permission to attend dances and proms.

Last, help and or therapy is sought for troubled teens found to have an alcohol or drug problem.

Prevention is the most effective means of teen crisis intervention. But how do you prevent gangs from staking out your small community and starting to lay out their turf? Because it seems that gangs are looking into rural America.

“Brunswick’s growing gang problem mirrors a national trend… They’re springing up in small communities across the nation due to several contributing factors.”

Small towns 50 miles from the nearest big city are not as immune to gangs as they once were. And unfortunately, bored teens are likely to welcome the distraction. Unless, you do something to prevent it. But how do you know if the invasion has started?

“Tagged” abandoned buildings – structures with gang-related graffiti – offers from drug dealers and economically depressed pockets of people are telltale at-risk signs he discovered while driving around Brunswick earlier this week.

In a nutshell, conditions are ideal for gangs to flourish unless a community-wide counteractive coalition reaches out to at-risk youth, said Reid, director of delinquency prevention for Boys and Girls Club National Headquarters..”

And of course, gangs make their money through criminal activities. Wherever gangs appear, there follows an upsurge of teen drug substance abuse. After all, gangbangers aren’t going to be applying for any local jobs.

The best antidote to gangs is make sure that teens are busy with better things - and that is a tall order.

“…it’s best that a community ensures the schools are performing so more kids can graduate and be more employable,” Reid said.

“It’s important to make sure all kids have opportunities to be involved in sports, education and cultural based activities to reinforce healthy youth development.”
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There is teen crisis intervention for drugs, alcohol, sexual offenses and robbery. But there really isn’t a program that specifically addresses how to make a teen comprehend the value of a life. It seems sort of self-evident to most of us and in times past, teens understood that killing another human being was a serious line to cross. Not so much anymore.

“Researcher John DiIulio Jr. from the University of Pennsylvania talked of juvenile facilities where “the buzz of impulsive violence, the vacant stares and smiles, and the remorseless eyes were at once too frightening and too depressing”.

These are observations made in the nineties when it was predicted that a new type of teen criminal was on the rise, the “superpredators.” Well, they are emerging, not when predicted, but now, in the new century, when you would have thought that crime associated with out-of-control and troubled teens would have diminished.

“Corzine divides juvenile offenders into three groups — those who can turn their lives around, those who most closely resemble DiIulio’s superpredators, and those on the bubble. The superpredators, or violent repeat offenders, comprise less than 10 percent of juvenile criminals.

We could all agree to lock them up. But a state study indicates that for other young offenders, adult prisons may only make them more prone to become violent once released.

Getting too tough can turn a salvageable kid into a hardened felon.

But not getting tough enough can turn loose a superpredator who will blow away a store clerk for $35.”
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Should a fourteen year old girl who gave meth to six classmates have a teen crisis intervention or spend some time in juvenile detention? I think this is a question that a large number of people are asking these days, what is the best way to handle a troubled teen.

“If the teenager who brought methamphetamine to a St. Paul middle school were older, she’d probably be going to prison.
Instead, the 14-year-old girl’s guilty plea Wednesday likely will result in drug intervention.
Though police caught the girl who handed out the drugs during lunch at Hazel Park Middle School Academy Tuesday - resulting in her and six other students being sent to area hospitals as a precaution - the investigation wasn’t over Wednesday. Police still want to know where the girl got the crystal meth. They say they found an additional 2 grams of the drug in her home Tuesday night.
Police are looking at the girl’s parents as a possible source, authorities said.On Wednesday, the 14-year-old girl involved pleaded guilty in Ramsey County juvenile court to second-degree sale of a controlled substance. She is being held in the county’s juvenile detention center until her next hearing on Oct. 10, according to the Ramsey County attorney’s office.
For an adult who pleaded guilty to the same charge, there would a presumptive prison sentence, said Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom. In juvenile court, there aren’t sentencing guidelines.
The 14-year-old girl might face detention, but “she’s very young - I would think the intervention would focus on treatment and supervision to ensure there aren’t any future problems,” said Backstrom, whose office isn’t involved in the case.
Before a judge determines the girl’s fate, officials will prepare a report that likely evaluates whether she has a prior criminal history, her school records, her home life, and her mental and chemical health.”

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K.D.

The first and foremost objective of effective teen crisis intervention is prevention. The best weapon in the prevention arsenal is information. Teen Transitions accomplishes both by disseminating information to adolescents in transition from middle school to high school. Given that data suggests that kids start using drugs and drinking as early as middle school, they might have to move this program back to elementary school.

Troubled teens grow right in front of your eyes. They had no more intention of becoming classified as troubled than their parents had expectations that they would become trouble. The earlier a teen learns the power of choice in forming their lives, the better chance that teen has of steering clear of destructive behavior.

It is continually repeated in reports on juveniles that they actually do value what a parent advises, even if they appear to dismiss it. Helping a teen to understand the nature of drugs, alcohol and addiction provides him viable defenses against peer pressure. Making it clear to the teen how absolutely adamant you are that they never use gives them the stability and assurance of clear boundaries, even if they moan and groan about the restraints.

“Entering high school can be an exciting but challenging time for teenagers and their parents,” said Heather Fortin, a social worker at the high school. “The goal of Transitions 2007 is to bring parents and teens together to focus on important issues, increase awareness of what teens may be facing today, and ultimately open the door to future discussions in the home.”
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Teen crisis intervention education in the area of prescription drugs emphasizes one point constantly; just because you got the drug from a doctor, doesn’t mean that taking that drug will always be a safe experience. Just because it is prescribed, doesn’t make it less addictive.

“No matter what he put in his body or how he acquired it, Alexander McCain would never have seen himself as an addict.

After all, he wasn’t snorting cocaine or injecting heroin. He was taking things anyone can get from the doctor.

“It’s so much easier to party by popping an OxyContin in your mouth instead of shooting up with heroin,” said Alexander’s brother, Steven Dick. “It makes it seem like you’re not doing drugs. Alexander would never consider himself a druggy, even though he was doing drugs all the time.”
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And his autopsy would prove it. He died from a combination of alcohol and his favorite “safe” prescription. But teens are not the only ones who misunderstand addiction.

One teen complained to me that she couldn’t abide her mother’s hypocrisy. Her mother is on anti-depressants, valuium and sleeping pills. Because all of this was prescribed, she differentiated her drug use from that of her daughter’s drug using friends. She’d be wrong and her daughter would be right to call her on it.

But her daughter will run into the biggest obstacle to recovery that addicts have - denial. Denial is extremely powerful. It has to be powerful for Alexander to have become addicted to the same drugs that killed his brother two years earlier.