Risk Behaviour and Addiction in Adolescence
A combination of online scientific articles and chapters from textbooks.
Table of contents
Lecture 1 2
In Substance and Behavioral Addictions: Concepts, Causes, and Cures - S. Sussman
(2017) [Chapter 1] 2
Addiction, adolescence, and the integration of control and motivation - T. E. Gladwin, B.
Figner, E. A. Crone & R. W. Wiers (2011) 8
Understanding the etiology of adolescent substance use through developmental
perspectives - E. M. Trucco & S. A. Hartmann (2021) 11
Cannabis use and the mental health of young people - W. D. Hall (2006) 16
Video: Mechanism of drug addiction in the brain 19
Lecture 2 20
Peer Similarity in Adolescent Social Networks: Types of Selection and Influence, and
Factors Contributing to Openness to Peer Influence - L. Laninga-Wijnen & R. Veenstra
(2021) 20
What Adolescents Do or Say to Actively Influence Peers: Compliance-Gaining Tactics
and Adolescent Deviance - E. M. Hoeben, M. A. Ten Cate, F. M. Weerman & J. M.
McGloin (2024) 25
Lecture 3 29
The great decline in adolescent risk behaviours: Unitary trend, separate 29
trends, or cascade? - J. Ball, R. Grucza, T. ter Bogt, C. Currie, M. de Looze & M.
Livingston (2023) 29
Lecture 4 35
Alcohol-Specific Parenting, Adolescents’ Self-Control, and Alcohol Use: A Moderated
Mediation Model - I. M. Koning (2014) 35
Bidirectional effects of Internet-specific parenting practices and compulsive social media
and Internet game use - I. M. Koning, M. Peeters, C. Finkenauer & R. J. J. M. van den
Eijnden (2018) 37
Lecture 5 40
Substance use: Determinants and opportunities for prevention in the family and school
context - M. Kleinjan & R. C. M. E. Engels (2014) [p. 15-32] 40
School-based programmes to reduce and prevent substance use in different age groups:
What works for whom? Systematic review and meta-regression analysis - S. A. Onrust,
R. Otten, J. Lammers & F. Smit (2016) 43
Lecture 6 45
Principles of Addiction - N. Castellanos-Ryan & P. J. Conrod (2013) [Chapter 28] 45
Dynamic Associations Between Anxiety Symptoms and Drinking Behavior From Early
Adolescence to Young Adulthood - M. Peeters, et al. (2024) 50
Genetic influences on impulsivity, risk taking, stress responsivity and vulnerability to drug
abuse and addiction - M. J. Kreek, D. A. Nielsen, E. R. Butelman & K. S. LaForge (2005)
51
Lecture 7 56
, 1
Neurobiologic Advances from the Brain Disease Model of Addiction - N. D. Volkow, G. F.
Koob & A. T. McLellan (2016) 56
Lecture 8 59
The behaviour change wheel: A new method for characterising and designing behaviour
change interventions - S. Michie, M. M. van Stralen & R. West (2011) 59
In Substance and Behavioral Addictions: Concepts, Causes, and Cures - S. Sussman
(2017) [Chapter 14] 62
, 2
Lecture 1
In Substance and Behavioral Addictions: Concepts, Causes, and Cures - S.
Sussman (2017) [Chapter 1]
Substance and behavioural addictions
- Substance addiction = repetitive intake of a drug or food.
- Only drugs that cross the blood-brain barrier were considered drugs you
could become addicted to.
= a filtering mechanism of the capillaries that carry blood to the brain
and spinal cord tissue, blocking the passage of certain substances.
Drug misuse can lead to a variety of negative life consequences.
- Behavioural addiction = engaging in types of behaviour repetitively which are not
directly taken into the body.
● E.g. gambling or sex.
Behavioural addictions can change how the brain’s natural chemicals (endogenous
ligands) operate, leading to long-term effects on mood, behaviour, and cognition.
Until recently science has considered an addiction; the misuse of drugs that led to
physiological withdrawal symptoms.
= the appearance of both physical and psychological symptoms which are caused by
physiological adaptations in the central nervous system and the brain due to chronic
exposure to a substance.
Evolution of definitions of addiction
- Addiction = ‘giving over’ or being ‘highly devoted’ to a person or activity, which can
have positive or negative implications.
History of substance addictions
Tobacco addiction
Tobacco is only quite recently seen as an addiction.
- Nicotine addiction was introduced in 1988 in the US.
Alcohol addiction
Alcohol misuse has already been noted around 450 BC.
Opium-related addiction
Initial opium use was described as “divine enjoyment”.
- Blair (1842) described multiple negative experiences he attributed to opium intake:
getting into fights, using even while continuing to suffer negative life consequences,
experiencing a great increase in tolerance, suffering bad withdrawal and other
physical symptoms, experiencing psychotic reactions, losing friends, and feeling a
sense of depression and hopelessness.
Cocaine addiction
Cocaine was used to cure an opium habit.
- Both opium and cocaine were contained in numerous products back in 1900. Around
250.000 Americans were opiate addicts.
Marijuana addiction
In 1001 Arabian Nights marijuana was referred to as the ‘hilarious herb’.
Food addiction
, 3
Bingin and purging eating behaviours were noted in ancient Rome, but this may not have
reflected consistent patterns of dysfunctional behaviour but rather popular behaviour during
ritualised banquets.
● Seeing food as an addiction appears to be a recent notion.
History of behavioural addictions
There have been writings about addictions such as gambling and sex. Other behavioural
addictions are less often discussed back then.
- E.g. the Roman imperial palace was turned into a casino.
A lot of out-of-self-control behaviours were considered to be forms of mania or morbid
appetites.
➢ Behavioural addictions have been empirically studied sine the 1980s.
For hunderd of years these addictive behaviours were referred to as examples of vice.
= behaviours which are pleasurable, popular, possible voluntary, and wicked.
● E.g. gambling, drug use, adultery, and prositution.
The common thread of behavioural addictions is the repetitive unusual manifestation,
involving motivated behaviour of some type, preoccupation, and loss of control, resulting in
clinically significant impairment in one or more life domains.
- Addiction symptoms according to historical records:
a) Increasing engagement in certain behaviour and reduction in alternative
behaviour.
b) Difficulties stopping the behaviour.
c) Thinking or acting bizarrely.
d) Sleep difficulties.
e) Social withdrawal.
f) Depression symptomatology
g) Such consequences as placing oneself in danger for accidents or violence.
‘Intenstional’ and ‘extensional’ conceptions of addictions
Two forms of definitions of addiction:
1. Intensional definition of addiction = a definition that attempt to describe at minimum
an addictive behavioural process(i.e. this happens, that leads to this, and then to
that) and at maximum an etiology (causal story).
a. Causal or process model type.
b. Relatively good explanatory power, though they are often more distant from
observables than descriptive models.
c. The five most used intenstional-type conceptions of addiction:
1) Physiological and psychological dependence = behaviour that results
in its continued performance being necessary for physiologic and
psychological equilibrium.
a) The addiction is trapped into a pattern of increasing
involvement in the behaviour, while feeling more and more
negative when trying to cut down or stop the behaviour.
● Tolerance = a need to engage in the behaviour at a relatively
greater level than in the past to achieve previous levels of
appetitive effects.
● Withdrawal = intense physical and mental disturbances after
the abrupt termination of the addictive behaviour.