The stories are all too common.
A popular high school football player was found dead not far from his Grand Forks home in North Dakota and two high school students in Texas died after taking synthetic drugs. One took the drug mistaking it to be LSD, while another took an overdose to celebrate accomplishing a 3.9 GPA.
With 46% of high school students using some form of addiction, teen substance abuse has emerged as America’s number one public health problem.
With some friends of my own adolescent children dying of drug-related causes, it became clear to me that there were huge gaps in adolescent care systems. So, I moved from being a clinician to a researcher working on interventions for youth with substance use disorders.
Typically, substance abuse among kids starts at a young age. Studies show that nine out of 10 Americans medically classified as addicts started smoking, drinking or using other substances before age 18.
[For more of this story, written by Lori K Holleran, go to http://theconversation.com/exp...with-addiction-39457]
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