Transcript of Preventing Substance Use and Abuse Among Pregnant and Parenting Teens
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Transcript of Preventing Substance Use and Abuse Among Pregnant and Parenting Teens Nichole Fisher: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I’m Nichole Fisher, Youth Development Coordinator with the Elect Team based at the Center for Schools and Communities. I’ll be your moderator for today. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to today’s session, Preventing Substance Use and Abuse among Pregnant and Parenting Teens. Today’s session will be facilitated by Stephanie Colvin-Roy. Stephanie has spent over 15 years providing professional development, and prevention education, and youth development. She has developed curriculum incorporating social and emotional learning competencies and resiliency on topics including team- building, alcohol and other drug abuse prevention, cyber addiction, bullying, cyber bullying, diversity, stress and anger management. Stephanie provides professional development consultation and technical assistance to schools and youth-serving agencies with a focus on social and emotional learning, as the training and organizational development associate, for the Center for the Promotion of Social and Emotional Learning, which is also called CPSEL, at the Center for Schools and Communities. Again, please note that for today’s webinar, participants will need to have 12 pieces of paper, small pieces of paper ready for an activity, or you can use a couple of sheets of paper that you can use to create columns. It is my great pleasure to welcome Stephanie with us this morning. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us. The microphone is now yours. Stephanie Colvin-Roy: Thank you very much, and welcome, everyone. Today’s objectives, we’ll be looking at specifically physical and behavioral characteristics of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We’ll be taking a look at specific ways in which we can help pregnant and parenting teens, and how they’re often enabled, and the difference specifically between enabling and helping behaviors. I’ll also be providing toward the end of the presentation some resources, specifically in prevention, as well as some strategies, specifically for pregnant and parenting teens. In terms of why young people and people in general use substances, it’s basically the same as it ever was. The difference might be that, over the course of the 15 plus years that I’ve been working in prevention, the idea of sort of using to sort of change the way, the thrills and sensations or change the way they feel, which used to be sort of the first types of responses that I would get, particularly from young people. Now that has shifted slightly, because eventually or initially, when we would have these conversations, those were sort of the first answers, and then, as the conversation would progress, and eventually, somebody might mention this idea of escaping one’s problems might be a reason why someone would use substances. Now, this self-medicative idea is often the first response or among the first responses that I hear when I do this work. I’m going to be sharing some information with you from the Pennsylvania Youth Survey, which is a survey that is given to 6th, 8h, 10th and 12th graders. The data that you’re going to be seeing throughout the presentation is from the 2015 PAYS youth survey. That is the most recent published data that we have. Just know that the 2017 data is coming. Then, that is done ... That survey is conducted every two years. Before we move forward, just to sort of give maybe some explanation for why, because I’m always asked why young people tend to self-medicate with substances. If we look at the PAYS data, they ask a lot of questions that are of a mental health concern. In the 2015 PAYS data, we had upwards of 24% or higher young people who responded to questions like, “I feel sad or depressed most days.” Again, on average, it was about 24% of students that would respond to that question. In some of our schools, it was even higher; 16% of this state reporting, students feel that life is not worth it, and 23% think that they are not good at all. If you do have a type feature that you have access to, this would be an opportunity to just give your thoughts on what you believe the number-one date rape drug is. Nichole will keep track of your responses, and because of time, we will move pretty quickly. But just out of curiosity, any thoughts on what the number-one date rape drug is? We’re starting get some responses here. The first one and I’m seeing this from a couple of people already is alcohol. That is correct. Every once in a while, when I do this presentation, I get ... Actually, more often than not, I get things like roofies and GHB, and things of that nature. Unfortunately, those things are still used. But it is important to keep in mind that alcohol is still the number-one date rape drug. That is the first substance that we’re going to talk about because it is still the most prevalent substance that our young people are using. Let’s talk a little bit more specifically about the problems associated with alcohol and specifically the developing adolescent brain. Binge drinking is, for our adolescents, four or more drinks in a sitting for an adolescent male, and three or more for an adolescent female. Those numbers are one higher, if we’re talking about the adult population. When I say, “Over a session,” what that means typically is over a one-hour period, and the ratios are 1 ounce of hard alcohol and the equivalent for other types of alcohol. Anecdotally, it’s not unusual for young people to begin drinking prior to getting to the place that they are planning to party. This term would be referred to as pre- gaming. Often, they will consume a large percentage of straight alcohol over a very short period of time, or they will, in other words, binge. Just for example, they may ... Young people may get a water bottle full of pure Vladimir vodka, so essentially 8 to 16 ounces, primarily of vodka. They may or may not cut that with something else; with a soda or a juice. Often, that is consumed before they even get to whatever activity is that they are planning to go to. That in and of itself is binge ... It’s exceeding binge drinking, before they even engage in the sort of the “fun activity” that they’re headed to. Some of the trends related to alcohol consumption, just sort of a statistic, young people under the age of 21 are consuming approximately 11% of the alcohol that’s consumed here in the United States. Then, you see some of the alcohol- related trends. We’ll go into some of them. The ones that may not be familiar, with pre-gaming we just talked about, that’s drinking excessively, typically before you even get to where you’re going. The one that may not be familiar is the pocket shot. This is a plastic pouch. It’s sort of a very sort of generic version of a flask. It’s a plastic pouch that’s filled with alcohol. It can be stashed easily into backpacks or slipped into even sort of a sock or a jacket pocket and things of that nature. The Boozie Bears and the vaporizing, we’ll take a look at in the next couple of slides. Alco-pops have been on the scene for a while. The idea behind an alco-pop is it’s a soft entry into hard alcohol. This is sort of the way to make alcohol taste good. Who typically ... Just if you wouldn’t mind sort of entertaining me here and using your chat feature again, if I create an alcoholic beverage that looks like the picture in your right-hand corner, this would actually be infused alcohol that somebody created with a candy. But if I was manufacturing a sweet, sugary, attractively packaged and colored alcoholic beverage, who typically might be most attracted to an alco-pop? If you could take a moment to respond to that? We’re getting some ... Nichole Fisher: I think so. Yes. We have a lot of ... Very quickly answered girls and adolescent males. Young girls. Stephanie Colvin-Roy: Absolutely. Yeah, so not only is it just our adolescent females or our females in general, but a lot of these things now ... I think, initially, when these alco-pops came onto the scene, it was sort of geared toward the female, the female drinker, and not always just the adolescent, but women in general. Then, there was sort of a shifting toward getting a younger male audience as well. Then, just sort of as a bonus question, who remembers the very first alco-pop to come on the market? This will date some of us in the audience slightly. But who remembers the very first alco-pop? Let’s see if we can get someone to think hard about this one. Let’s see in the response on this one yet. The very ... Zima [crosstalk 00:11:51]. We have Zima as one. We’re going to hold that for just a second because the very first alco-pop was actually Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers. But Zima was the one that really was, and that came in from ... Lisa? Is that ... Nichole Fisher: Lisa Pisano, yeah, from Berks County. Stephanie Colvin-Roy: Lisa Pisano from Berks County. Zima was groundbreaking because that one was really sort of the one that came on the scene that was ..