Types

• The basic types of research on family problems stemming from drug abuse normally target the financial effects, the effects of fetal exposure to material drug abuse, early childhood experience, family violence, and the effects on older children. Within all of these areas, the basic correlation is repeatedly found: drug abuse by parents can destroy the family while the children are either abused or neglected.
  
  

Identification

• The methods employed in this sort of research seek to identify the nature of the risk, and the nature of the effects contained in a drug abusing household. Finances deteriorate, mental functioning lessens, and children beginning to exhibit signs of this deterioration as well. These include symptoms of attention getting, poor academic performance, aggression and hyperactivity.
  
  

Considerations

• The list of effects based on family drug abuse is long and depressing. The research has uncovered the bald fact that roughly 40 percent of family disputes are fueled by alcohol. Recent research has shown that about 40 percent of men and 38 percent of women were drinking in the average police report of domestic violence. The basic correlation between deteriorating relations and substance abuse has been too well documented to doubt.
  
  

Significance

• It need not be said that the populations of western countries are soaked in drugs of various kinds. The effects on the population are significant, expensive and often very difficult to treat. The most vulnerable groups here are young people, who normally exhibit everything from retardation to a life of crime as a result of families rendered dysfunctional by drug abuse. Most of the children within the child welfare system have drug abusing parents and even older siblings. The more research that is produced, the more acute this correlation becomes, demanding great effort on the part of communities to keep families straight and sober.
  
  

Prevention/Solution

• Community and family based programs combating drug abuse have been proven to work. In general, the community programs should be aimed at specific risks that might be more acute in certain communities. Programs need to adjust with the nature of the population targeted. High risk areas demand different approaches than low risk ones. Strong enforcement is needed from the family courts and child welfare agencies where a zero-tolerance policy for parental drug abuse is put in place. The research indicates that enforcement, along with strong programs at all levels, does work to alleviate the occurrence of drug abuse and provide methods of treatment for parents who want to raise children properly.