"Då rökte jag på. Sen började jag lite med tjack och sånt också." :en studie om hur ungdomars missbruk påverkar familjen

The purpose of our report was to analyze the effects of youth drug abuse on the families concerned. Youth drug abuse made us wonder about the effects on the family as a whole, of those involved with drug abuse. To answer this question, we decided to employ an empiric study in the form of interviews with four teenagers, five parents and four drug counselors. Because our intent was to understand rather than try to measure the problems involved, we decided on a qualitative method. Our method built upon semi-structured interviews using open questions, where the interviewees were free to express their own thoughts and opinions. Because the family and family members are central in our work we have used both systemic family crisis theory and psychodynamic crisis theory. Psychodynamic theory is based on the individual, whereas systemic family crisis theory builds upon the whole family as a unit. The idea of co-evolution is also included in systemic theory. Co-evolution explains how the individual influences and is influenced by others which in turn influence the inter family dynamic. Our analysis has been based around three themes; the family, views around the drug abuse and the support from the public services. The result shows that due to teenage drug abuse the family unit is plunged into crisis. The depth of crisis often depends on how secure the family as a unit has functioned beforehand. The opinions on drug abuse have naturally differed depending on the interview subject. We arrived at the conclusion that both family and puberty have a large influence on the aforementioned abuse. The second conclusion arrived at was that lack of funding, education, communication and understanding for the problem is a source of frustration for all the interviewees involved in our study