Psychology 2020A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Legal Drinking Age, Methadone, Ayahuasca

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2020A/B
• Professor: Kelly Barnes

Document Summary

Substance-abuse prevention efforts fall into three basic levels of intervention: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary prevention focuses on populations that have had only minimal or no exposure to drugs. Secondary prevention focuses on populations whose drug experience has not yet been associated with serious long-term problems. Tertiary prevention focuses on populations who have entered treatment; the goal is to prevent relapse. The overall strategy for substance-abuse prevention is to minimize the risk factors in a person"s life with respect to drug-taking behaviour and to maximize the protective factors. The inclination to resist the effects of risk factors for drug-taking behavior through the action of protective factors is referred to as resilience. In order to be evidence-based, primary and secondary prevention programs must be evaluated against a control group that did not receive the intervention. Positive change per se is not enough for a judgment of success.