Interventions must be implemented with the age groups for which there is evidence of effectiveness (European Prevention Curriculum, 2019).
a) For children in middle childhood, substance use prevention strategies focus on the delivery of simple, straightforward instructions, for example, doctors give you medicine when you are sick to make you well; medicine can be bad for you if you take it without a doctor telling you to; giving medicine to others is dangerous, even if they ask for it.
Teachers can also implement strategies designed to reward prosocial behaviour which is intended as beneficial for others and punish impulsive or inappropriate behaviour.
b) With guidance, early adolescents can develop positive values and attitudes that do not support substance use and on which they can base their decisions on whether or not to use substances.
Students can get to know the school’s policies concerning psychoactive substances and the consequences of infractions.
They can understand how advertising attempts to influence them to use tobacco, alcohol, and other substances, and they can learn about the adverse consequences of alcohol, tobacco and other substance use on feelings, perceptions and behavioural health and their developing brains.
They should also continue to develop and practise a range of age-related personal and social skills, as we have seen in the previous unit.
For later adolescence, students should be able to use their values, decision-making skills, and various life skills – particularly their assertiveness or ‘resistance’ skills, especially in situations where substances are used or where they may be invited to use substances. They should also learn about social sanctions related to illicit substance use.
Finally, they can be taught a variety of strategies to reduce the adverse effects of substance use (Marlatt et al., 2011).
As with every teaching material, there should be a clear understanding of the children’s ages and development phase.
The following table offers an overview of strategies that are effective and not in the area of prevention of addictions at school (European Prevention Curriculum, 2019 and UK Department of Health, 2001, in Guide for Prevention, Antidrug Council of Cyprus, 2020):
|Effective strategies for PI at school|
What does not work
Delivery and structure
Individual Skills applied in conjunction with Interpersonal Skills:
As underlined before, the material developed and used, as well as the methods should be aligned with the age of the students (Antidrug Council of Cyprus, 2020):