It accounts for a third of all drug addictions.
Anastasia Podshibyakina, a psychiatrist-narcologist at the Volgograd regional clinical drug dispensary, named the reasons that push modern children and teenagers to drugs.
As a rule, this is an unstable and unformed psyche, increased emotionality, excessive curiosity, the desire to grow up faster and the society in which the child is, including family and company. Children often turn to drug use because of personal problems, without having internal and external support, if there is no person nearby who is able to support and come to help.
– It is possible to single out the risk groups of children and adolescents, who are most often among those who use narcotic substances, – says Ananstasia Podshibyakina. – These are children with character traits – unstable, impulsive, and children with deviant or delinquent behavior. It is possible to suspect that a child or teenager is using prohibited substances based on external signs. These include a change in the color of the skin – pronounced pallor, slowing down or speeding up the pace of speech, its simplicity, unsteady gait, excessively dilated or, on the contrary, narrowed pupils, lacrimation, chronic cough; the smell of cigarettes, glue or other chemicals from clothes and from the child himself, swelling of the face; brown plaque on the tongue and teeth, yellow finger tips.
The psychiatrist said that the behavior of a child who uses prohibited substances also changes. First of all, studies suffer – it can be frequent absences without a valid reason, as well as a decrease in academic performance and an indifferent attitude to the educational process. This can also include returning home late, conflicts with teachers, parents, peers.
– New, “dubious” companions appear, about whom the child talks little and reluctantly, – says the doctor. – The teenager becomes more irritable, hot-tempered, aggressive, rude, distances himself from significant adults and tends to loneliness. A depressed state is often observed. More obvious signs include frequent and sudden changes in mood for no apparent reason, episodes of lethargy or unreasonable agitation, sleep disturbances, lying, deviousness, frequent requests or demands for money under various pretexts, theft.
In order not to miss the fact of the child’s use of narcotic substances, it is necessary to have a trusting child-parent relationship. However, not everyone succeeds in this and not always: either this contact experiences various crisis moments and weakens as the child grows up, or it cannot be established at all from the very beginning. In such a case, teachers, lecturers, coaches come to the rescue – maintaining contact with them also plays an important role, considering that the child spends most of the time outside the house “in front of” the teachers.
– How to help a teenager overcome addiction? First of all, it is necessary to realize that it has already happened, says the doctor. – After accepting the situation, all family members need to unite and follow one clear plan of action. Here are some important points to make: Talk about the harms of drugs, but avoid being too judgmental. Do not be afraid to immediately turn to specialists in specialized institutions. Establish a trusting contact with the child and think together about what factors may have influenced the adolescent’s drug addiction. For example, if it is a dysfunctional family, where one or more family members are drug addicts, then it does not make sense to convince the child verbally that this is bad.