Risk and Protective Factors of Drug Use among High-Risk Adolescents: Examining the Resilience Theory

From the literature review, high-risk adolescents are much more vulnerable to drug use than general adolescents, but few studies examined the drug use behavior of high risk adolescents in Taiwan. In the past, many studies in western countries focused on risk factors explaining adolescents’ drug use, but there was a lack of studies trying to understand why some adolescents can say no to drugs. This study tries to, on the basis of the resilience theory, explore three aspects of protective factors, including individual, family and professional factors, to drug use of high-risk adolescents.
Taking a quantitative approach, this study surveyed 12 to 21 years old high-risk adolescents using a structured questionnaire. Using the purposive sampling method, respondents from welfare agencies serving high-risk adolescents of the large area of Taipei city were selected. This study received 450 questionnaires, 273 were with complete data. In this study, logistic regression analyses were used to examine high-risk adolescent’s risk and protective factors to drug use. Findings of this study indicated that over 1/3 of respondents had ever used drug; while Ketamine was the most often used drug. Furthermore, over half of respondents that ever used drug continue using drug in the past year. The study also found that after controlled for the influence of other variables, availability of drugs and drug use of peers could explain drug use behavior of high-risk adolescents. It showed that the higher availability of drugs and the more drug use of peers would increase the probabilities of drug use among high-risk adolescents. On the other hand, self-efficacy of refusing drug could explain the continuing use of drugs among high-risk adolescents. It showed that the higher self-efficacy of refusing drug would reduce the probabilities of their drug use behavior.
Implications were conclude in this study, and suggestions are recommended to high-risk adolescent’s parents, workers in social organizations serving high-risk adolescents, and communities as well as governmental agencies. It is hoped that the aforementioned agencies can make efforts to help high-risk adolescent to refuse drug, and to create save environments and refrain adolescents from accessing illegal drugs.