Drug misuse and the short and long-term negative effects

1. Drug misuse and the short and long-term negative effects L/O To learn how lifestyle choices can affect our general health and well-being – Drug misuse Task 1 Starter activity List reasons why you think people take drugs

2. L/O To learn how lifestyle choices can affect our general health and well-being – Drug misuse AfL • People take drugs because they want to change something about their lives. • Here are some of the reasons young people have given for taking drugs: • To fit in • To escape or relax • To relieve boredom • To seem grown up • To rebel • To experiment • They think drugs are a solution. But eventually, the drugs become the problem. • Difficult as it may be to face one’s problems, the consequences of drug use are always worse than the problem one is trying to solve with them. The real answer is to get the facts and not to take drugs in the first place.

3. L/O To learn how lifestyle choices can affect our general health and well-being – Drug misuse Self esteem and drugs – emotional reasons • Someone who is sad might use drugs to get a feeling of happiness, but it does not work. Drugs can lift a person into a fake kind of cheerfulness, but when the drug wears off, he or she crashes even lower than before. And each time, the emotional plunge is lower and lower. Eventually, drugs will completely destroy all the creativity a person has. http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/drugs/basic-facts-about-commonly-abused-drugs.html

4. Drug misuse and the short and long-term negative effects • Drug misuse can be dangerous for three main reasons: • you could become addicted to the drug, • the drug could cause physical and psychological harm, and • drug abuse can have a negative effect on your quality of life. • Addiction • How addictive a drug is likely to be is determined by two things: • how pleasurable taking the drug is, and how quickly the drug reaches your brain. • Drugs that are smoked, injected or snorted can reach the brain very quickly and are usually more addictive than drugs that are swallowed. • In 2007, the medical journal The Lancet commissioned a number of drug experts to asses how potentially addictive the most popular illegal drugs are. The results, in order of addictiveness with the most addictive at the top, were: • Heroin. • Cocaine. • Tranquillisers. • Amphetamines. • Ketamine. • Cannabis. • Hallucinogens. • Ecstasy. L/O To learn how lifestyle choices can affect our general health and well-being – Drug misuse

5. The wider impact of drug misuse • As well as the impact on your health, drug misuse can have a negative effect on your quality of life and relationships with others. • Many drug abusers find that they lose touch with their family and friends or that their family and friends lose patience with them due to their unreasonable behaviour. • Hobbies, interests and ambitions can be forgotten as drugs become more and more important. It can become increasingly difficult to hold down a job if you have a drug problem. • People with a serious drug addiction, such as a heroin, cocaine or crack addiction, often resort to desperate, illegal and dangerous activities to find money to pay for their drugs. Examples include: • begging, • burglary, • shop-lifting, • street crime, such as mugging or bag snatching, and • prostitution. L/O To learn how lifestyle choices can affect our general health and well-being - drug misuse

6. Health campaigns for drug misuse • Health care education has a particular role in destigmatising substance misusers. • The costs of substance misuse to the NHS are enormous, so it makes economic as well as clinical sense to invest in greater emphasis on addressing the issue, during both undergraduate and postgraduate training. Until this happens, health services will help to perpetuate stigma rather than take the lead in reducing it. • From analysing over 20 years of work and research in the field of Drug Education, the following principles and components are recommended for effectiveness: • Programmes should: • Enhance protective factors and reverse or reduce risk factors. [Protective factors are those associated with reduced potential for drug use. Risk factors are those that make the potential for drug use more likely.] • Address all forms of drug abuse, alone or in combination, including the underage use of legal drugs (e.g., tobacco or alcohol); the use of illegal drugs; and the inappropriate use of legally obtained substances (e.g., inhalants), prescription medications, or over-the-counter drugs. • Include a strong family-based component (in addition to the school-based component) to enhance family bonding and relationships and include parenting skills; practice in developing, discussing, and enforcing family policies on substance abuse; and training in drug education and information. • Start early in a child’s life (at pre-school) to address health issues and risk factors for drug use and be long-term and ongoing through children’s school years. • Have a targeted programme for key transition times such as transition to secondary school. • Involve schools, having Head Teachers and teachers committed to programmes and providing follow-up work and reinforcement of programme objectives. • Involve the entire community. • Involve press/media to support drug education aims (through campaigns, advertisements, etc). • Use interactive teaching techniques for active involvement in learning, such as discussion, decision making and role play. • Include general life skills training and training in skills to resist drugs when offered, strengthen personal attitudes and commitments against drug use, and increase social competency (e.g., in communications, peer relationships, self-efficacy, and assertiveness). • Be age-specific, developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive. Drugs Awareness Campaign http://www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/16#alc http://www.lifeeducation.org.uk/newsletter/newsindex.php?action=publicarticle&id=392 http://www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/16#alc

7. Families have a large part to play in drug health awareness • Families have a significant role to play in reducing the impact of drugs and alcohol on young people, not only in conveying vital information to them, but in promoting the factors that protect young people from the risks of drug and alcohol misuse (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs [ACMD], 2006; Velleman et al, 2000). • Programmes involving families in drug and alcohol education work should: • Develop programmes which promote protective factors that help to reduce the risk of young people becoming involved in drug and alcohol misuse. • Be adequately resourced to develop quality programmes, enabling them to focus on the complex process of involving vulnerable and diverse families in projects. • Focus on the needs and experiences of young people, particularly those vulnerable to harm caused by drugs and alcohol, by developing participative and creative programmes of interest to them. • Find positive, empowering approaches to parenting, resilience work and drug and alcohol education, to encourage the most vulnerable and challenged families to engage and stay in programmes. • Programmes can effectively engage the most vulnerable of adults and young people. However, these programmes need to be planned and developed according to diverse needs and interests. • To be effective, programmes should explore issues relating to parenting, drugs and alcohol and family diversity, employing innovative methods to fully engage, involve and empower the most vulnerable and diverse of families. • Bouncing Back!, Adfam UK, February 2007.

8. Drugs rehabilitation units

9. How effective is drug rehabilitation? Agonist Maintenance Treatment for opiate addicts usually is conducted in outpatient settings, often called methadone treatment programs. These programs use a long-acting synthetic opiate medication, usually methadone or LAAM, administered orally for a sustained period at a dosage sufficient to prevent opiate withdrawal, block the effects of illicit opiate use, and decrease opiate craving. Patients stabilized on adequate, sustained dosages of methadone or LAAM can function normally. They can hold jobs, avoid the crime and violence of the street culture, and reduce their exposure to HIV by stopping or decreasing injection drug use and drug-related high-risk sexual behavior. Patients stabilized on opiate agonists can engage more readily in counseling and other behavioral interventions essential to recovery and rehabilitation. The best, most effective opiate agonist maintenance programs include individual and/or group counseling, as well as provision of, or referral to, other needed medical, psychological, and social services. • According to several studies, drug treatment reduces drug use by 40 to 60 percent and significantly decreases criminal activity during and after treatment. For example, a study of therapeutic community treatment for drug offenders demonstrated that arrests for violent and nonviolent criminal acts were reduced by 40 percent or more. Methadone treatment has been shown to decrease criminal behavior by as much as 50 percent. Research shows that drug addiction treatment reduces the risk of HIV infection and that interventions to prevent HIV are much less costly than treating HIV-related illnesses. Treatment can improve the prospects for employment, with gains of up to 40 percent after treatment. • Although these effectiveness rates hold in general, individual treatment outcomes depend on the extent and nature of the patient's presenting problems, the appropriateness of the treatment components and related services used to address those problems, and the degree of active engagement of the patient in the treatment process. L/O To learn how lifestyle choices can affect our general health and well-being – Drug misuse

10. L/O To learn how lifestyle choices can affect our general health and well-being – Drug misuse

11. Mass Media Campaign

13. The national drugs campaign FRANK • (http://www.talktofrank.com/) supports the Drug Strategy's objective of preventing young people from becoming problem drug users, by aiming to provide credible and accurate drugs information to young people, parents and carers through a variety of different media (including by phone, online and by paper materials). • It also aims to support stakeholders across the country by supporting local activities and providing information. It was launched in May 2003 achieving widespread media coverage. • Adverts on the television and radio, posters and other campaign materials were used to raise awareness of the resource and to reach as many people as possible. In its first year, 1.5 million people logged onto FRANK's website, and over 400,000 calls were received to its helpline. Parents and young people are accessing FRANK, and 73% of stakeholders believe that the service does not need improvement.

14. Task 2 apply some knowledge – respond to this image – list everything you are concerned about and who is it?

15. Task 3 secure some knowledge - What should you do as a medical professional? Why do you think this 26 year old has become drug dependent?

16. AfL • His father had a lot of influence over him as a child. • He was allowed to smoke cannabis from the age of 13 years. • His family is middle class and have plenty of money coming in. His parents divorced when he was 5 years old, he stays with each one when he has fallen out with the other parent. • His mother has changed his bedroom at her home into an office. She does cook and wash his clothes on occasions. His father generous with money and allow his son to sleep over with friends whenever he likes. • His father never checked to see where he was staying. • At the age of 12 years his father moved to London, leaving him in Yorkshire. • He has some really close friends that look out for him, and let him stay at their homes. • What do you think about the nurturing and environmental factors?

17. Plenary – do these get the message across, what is your opinion?