Young Lives at Risk: Health Experts Advise Parents To Avert Youngsters’ Drug Abuse

Shazia Mehboob

Islamabad: In order to stop children from drug abuse, health professionals have recommended parents to watch any changes in behaviour by keeping an eye out for hectic schedules, financial limitations, mental stress, habits, and unfavourable relationships.

Clinical Psychologist Mariam Riaz stated that young people can develop a drug addiction at any age, so parents should keep an eye on their kids’ friends’ circle, phone conversations, internet search histories, and mood swings for early prevention and treatment. She advised parents to be concerned if their kids become irritated, don’t practise good hygiene, or spend a lot of time in the bathroom or outside the house.

Explaining the treatment of addiction, Clinical Psychologist Shamsheer Hayat said, “With the aid of therapy, counselling, and patient monitoring, drug addiction can be totally cured. As a result, the guardians of addicts should hire the services of a licenced rehabilitation facility for the treatment and cure.”

He informed that the patient’s health is monitored by a group of medical experts, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists before the detoxification process is begun as the first stage of treatment. Cognitive behavioural therapy and counselling sessions are provided to patients who are residing at the rehabilitation centre for a period of three months.

Shamsheer Hayat further mentioned that patients are also provided with the tools to avoid the precarious scenario when they return to their normal lives. “In order to increase their faith and willpower, patients are also urged to follow religious practices,” he recommended. Psychologist Hayat said, “Drug addiction should be treated in the same way as any other sickness and that, if left untreated, continued drug use would harm the body’s key organs and cause death.”

Prevailing Drug Use Situation

There are more than 6.7 million drug users in Pakistan and 4 million among them are addicts, which is the highest number for any country in the world, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report on ‘Drug use in Pakistan 2013’. Addiction to hard drugs is on the rise among Pakistanis with 4.25 million who used any illicit substance in the past year are considered to be drug dependent and need some kind of structured intervention to cure their drug use disorder.

KP and Balochistan are the most affected provinces in terms of drug consumption, with tens of thousands of drug users, especially the youth. A staggering 99.7 per cent of those who seek treatment for drug addiction in Pakistan simply cannot afford it. While treatment and specialist interventions are in short supply, they are available to fewer than 30,000 drug users a year. In addition to drug usage, there are indicators of an HIV epidemic that is rapidly spreading. According to survey findings, those who inject drugs have a relatively high frequency of HIV risk behaviours.

Youth, Major Victims of Drug Abuse

According to the National Human Development Report released in May 2018 by UNDP Pakistan, the country now has the highest proportion of young people in its history. Substance Use Disorders (SUD) are chronic diseases due to excessive and uncontrolled intake of drugs spreading fast among Pakistani youth where 64 per cent of the population is below the age of 29 and 30 per cent are between the age of 15 and 29 years, according to the UN Office of Drugs and Crime. As per UNODC stats, more than 800,000 Pakistanis aged between 15 and 64 use heroin regularly.

There aren’t many public sector treatment and rehabilitation facilities in Pakistan for the thousands of drug addicts who want to overcome their addiction. The majority of existing treatment and rehabilitation facilities provide detoxification services only, particularly in the public sector-run health facilities, and no rehabilitation programmes exist.

Although the Anti-Narcotics Force has established three Model Addiction Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers (MATRCs) in Islamabad, Quetta, and Karachi; each of these facilities can only accommodate 150 drug users due to its 45 beds in Islamabad and Quetta, and 60 beds in Karachi. In our society, drug misuse has become deeply ingrained. Youth are engaged in a variety of pointless activities, including drug use. They are unable to carry out their everyday tasks and as a result, they are becoming liabilities rather than assets.

The Way Forward

Maqsood  Ahmed, owner of Family Medicine & Rehabilitation Centre, says all stakeholders and individual actors would have to make sincere efforts to eradicate drug abuse from society. In this regard, psychologists are the main stakeholders but there is no regulatory body to ensure their accountability.

The government’s main priority should be to establish such a body because treatment for drug addiction will not be effective as long as there is no regulatory body for clinical psychologists, Ahmed added. Moreover, there should be a regulatory body for rehab facilities to ensure standardised treatment protocols, training of staff members, and the implementation of multiple forms of treatment.

Maqsood  Ahmed said Pakistan has a lesser number of trained clinical psychologists and family physicians are not well-trained, so the government needs to work on augmenting the capacity-building of psychologists. It is imperative to build a centralised mechanism and coordinate the efforts of all stakeholders and relevant government departments, including the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF), to address regulatory issues.