From Risk Factors to Resilience: Therapeutic Approaches to Adolescent Substance Use

Dr. Essence presented this training on adolescent substance use, opening with the data: more than half of adolescents report experimenting with substances before graduating high school (NIDA, 2020). Rather than treating that as an isolated behavior problem, the training framed substance use through a family-centered lens and walked through evidence-based interventions built for how adolescents actually respond to treatment.

Dr. Essence also named the challenges specific to this population directly — the reasons adolescent treatment can't just be adult treatment scaled down — and offered practical strategies to support long-term recovery, not just short-term compliance.

Key Takeaways from the training

• Adolescent substance use is common enough to require a proactive framework, not just crisis response. – Grounded in NIDA data on how many teens experiment before graduation.

• A family-centered approach changes outcomes. – Evidence-based interventions work better when they engage the family system, not just the individual teen.

• Adolescents face treatment barriers unique to their age and stage. – The training names these directly and offers strategies built around them, not adapted from adult protocols.