Predisposed Kids

Educators and counselors who work with teens are well-versed in the signs of addiction and most are trained to spot kids who may be suffering from a drug or alcohol problem. But now researchers are working to identify youth who are at higher risk for addiction before they ever begin experimenting with drugs or alcohol.

Ralph E. Tarter, Director of the NIDA-funded Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research (CEDAR) and a Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, is researching the biobehavioral risk factors which underlie the risk for substance use disorders within a developmental perspective.

His research into the neurobehavioral antecedents of addiction holds out the promise of one day being able to target at-risk youth long before they’ve begun using, potentially averting the devastation of addiction before it has a chance to take root, or at least catching it early enough to avoid the worst of its life-destroying effects, Behavioral Health Central recently reported.

The study doesn’t just focus on the biological predisposition to addiction either. It also takes into account environmental factors, using both areas to search out the differences in those at-risk. “Our challenge and task is to quantify it and put it into a meaningful perspective so that it is useful for clinicians in designing both prevention and treatment programs,” Tarter explains.

Early Signs of Possible Addiction

So far, the study seems to indicate that there are characteristics present in infancy and early childhood that may point to a risk for future addiction.  One such characteristic is what Tarter calls “a temperamentally difficult baby,” adding, “We see this in children when they get a little older they tend to be a little more overactive, more restless. The behavior is less organized. They then tend to be more impulsive, making it very hard for parents to discipline them, and as a result, the children get onto a trajectory of getting into conflicts with parents, with other children, and with teachers beginning early in nursery school and in daycare setting; because the behavior is not well organized and regulated. That is one of the long-term effects of what the drugs may do when they start using them, that these drugs may create a pharmacologically-based regulation, which is one of the factors that is rewarding and therefore contributing to continued use.”

This is just one factor and research continues into the origin of those psychological characteristics, but Tarter is already seeing measurable results from his work.

“We’re identifying these mechanisms very, very early in life and in our own research center we’re able, for example, to measure them and scale these characteristics on a single measure, which allows us to predict with about 75 percent accuracy right now whether or not a 10-year-old child will in fact develop an addiction by the age of 22,” Tarter told Behavioral Health Central. “So we’re able to get some pretty long-term predictions by taking into account an understanding of the genetic and early environmental basis of these characteristics.”

Screening tools continue to be developed that may help professionals – and eventually parents and teachers – spot warning signs and eventually begin to prevent addiction before it even starts.  

Teen Drug Addiction

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