Zipora Barnea

Personality, Cognitive, and Interpersonal Factors in Adolescent Substance Use: A Longitudinal Test of an Integrative Model.

This study tests a multidimensional model of adolescent drug use. The model incorporates sociodemographic variables, personality variables (state and trait anxiety, depressive mood, and sensation seeking), cognitive variables (knowledge, attitudes, and intentions), interpersonal factors (relationships with peers and parents), and the availability of drugs. The model was tested in a longitudinal study, comprising two phases. A total of 1446 high school students served as subjects. The role of cognitive (attitudinal) and interpersonal factors (relationships with parents and peers) was confirmed. In addition, sensation seeking proved to have significant predictive power. Anxiety, depression, and sociodemographic factors, by contrast, had virtually no influence. Availability had a minor effect. The multidimensional explanation was validated longitudinally. The factors related to drug use at the first phase predicted use at the second. This multidimensional explanation accounted for the use of various substances, suggesting that different substances—whether legal or illegal—share a common multidimensional explanation.

Substance Misuse and Abuse Among the Elderly

This article reviews h e literature on the misuse and abuse of ~svchoactive substances amone the elderlv. Three main patterns oi abuse characteristic of this a& group are-identified and analyzed: abuse of medications. of alcohol, and of illegal druns. The articie refers to issues such as: the extent (prevalence i i d inchence) of the problem among the elderly, the prediclors and correlates of abuse, and its special dangers and effects on the elderly and their environment. The key roles that social workers should play in pre- vention and treatment are discussed.

A Critical and Comparative Review of the Prevention of Drug and Alcohol Abuse in Israel

The article reviews the various programs and intervention strategies of substance abuse prevention in Israel. It concentrates mainly on the stages of primary and secondary prevention among youth. School-based prevention programs, those designated for detached youth as well as community-based programs, are presented and analyzed. The prevention efforts in Israel are also compared to those in other Western countries. The discussion includes recommendations for future developments in this domain.

Alcohol and drug abuse in Israel in the twenty-first century: implications for social work education

Now is the time to examine what is being done in social welfare and to plan the future. This article attempts to forecast future trends and needs in a specific domain addiction to psychoactive substances and to analyse the implications for social work practice. Substance abuse is not generally perceived as belonging to the social worker’s area of expertise, unlike other social problems such as poverty and inequality, unemployment, crime, developmental disablement, etc. Our first premise is, therefore, that social work, perhaps more than any other helping profession, is the right one to cope with this phenomenon. There are several reasons for this claim: First, in the last decade a fundamental change has taken place in the perception of addictive behaviours. Addiction is considered a complex behaviour with a variety of causes and aspects (biological, psychological, social, legal, etc.). Therefore, the best model for understanding, assessing and coping with the phenomenon is the bio-psychosocial one (Donovan and Marlatt, 1988). In this context, social work as a profession, dealing with bio-psychosocial intervention, has a major role to play. Second, the main task of social work is to solve social problems of the needy, vulnerable and weak populations in society (Fink