Promoting well-being: Preventing problematic substance use through positive youth development

Promoting students’ well-being can reduce their risk of problematic substance use.

What the research says

School communities can play an important role in preventing problematic substance use by enhancing students’ well-being and resilience.
Cannabis legalization and regulation and the increased public attention to substance use issues have sparked discussions on the role of school communities in addressing problematic substance use among youth.

Schools are well-positioned to help prevent problematic substance use among students through efforts to enhance well-being.

Individuals’ overall well-being reflects numerous factors, including how one perceives their relationships, one’s sense of purpose, life satisfaction, optimism, self-esteem and competence and engagement and interest in daily activities. Resilience (i.e., the ability to transform stressful events or adversity into opportunities to learn and thrive) is another factor that is closely related and can contribute to well-being. Attention to youths’ well-being and resilience may be particularly important, given the numerous, often challenging, physical, social and emotional changes that take place during this life stage.

Recent Canadian school-based research identified that a high degree of overall well-being among youth is protective against substance use, including among individuals with mental health problems^{Footnote 1} . This adds to a growing body of research suggesting that universal school-based efforts (i.e., intended for all students) to enhance well-being and resilience among youth should be a part of a comprehensive approach to preventing problematic substance use ^{Footnote 2 Footnote 3 Footnote 4 Footnote 5}.

Efforts to enhance students’ well-being can complement other efforts more explicitly designed to prevent problematic substance use (e.g., substance use-related health education, awareness campaigns, and assemblies). These more traditional knowledge-based approaches are limited in their ability to address students’ risk of problematic substance use in isolation ^{Footnote 4 Footnote 6}, and even can produce unintended negative consequences (i.e., in the case of abstinence-only approaches and fear appeals) ^{Footnote 7}. This research underscores the need to also apply more holistic approaches to prevention.

Enhancing youths’ well-being involves increasing protective factors that can buffer risk of problematic substance use.

Supporting well-being requires enhancing protective factors (described below) that positively contribute to students’ development while minimizing risk factors (e.g., social isolation, experiences of trauma and violence and unhealthy relationships) that can interfere with healthy development and lead to negative outcomes like problematic substance use.

Picture a balance scale. Building and strengthening protective factors and positive experiences on one side of the scale can effectively counterbalance risk factors and negative experiences on the other, ultimately increasing youths’ overall well-being.

While there are numerous protective factors that positively contribute to students’ overall health and well-being, there are seven key protective factors that school communities can bolster that are linked to lower rates of problematic substance use among youth^{Footnote 8}. These protective factors are:

• Self-efficacy, strong communication and decision-making skills^{Footnote 9};
• A sense of hope, faith and cultural identity ^{Footnote 8 Footnote 9};
• Adequate sleep, healthy diet and physical exercise ^{Footnote 10} ;
• A sense of belonging, connectedness, and social support ^{Footnote 9};
• Stable and caring relationships with supportive adults (e.g., parents/ caregivers, teachers, mentors and coaches, etc.) ^{Footnote 11};
• Opportunities for and engagement in positive behaviours such as helping, sharing, donating and volunteering^{Footnote 9}; and
• School engagement and a sense of school connectedness ^{Footnote 9}.

Enhancing these protective factors through school communities can directly help to foster well-being and prevent problematic substance use among students.

Strategies school communities can adopt to promote students’ well-being

Provide opportunities for youth to engage in positive behaviours and acknowledge acts of kindness

By providing diverse and accessible opportunities for youth to engage in positive behaviours (e.g., volunteering, helping, sharing and donating), school communities can enhance students’ well-being and resilience and decrease their risk of problematic substance use ^{Footnote 9}. Youth- and peer-oriented activities (e.g., peer-mentoring, tutoring and coaching) support students’ autonomy and represent opportunities to make a real difference in their communities.

Provide opportunities for skill-building

Create opportunities for students to develop a variety of skills. For example, physical skills honed through exercise and recreation can help regulate mood, build self-esteem and increase feelings of happiness and life satisfaction ^{Footnote 12}. Likewise, social skills, such as conflict resolution, and emotional skills, such as self-efficacy and self-awareness, are important individual-level resources for enhancing resilience.

Encourage students’ sense of hope

Hope involves having a sense of purpose and internal motivation. Hope is positively associated with life satisfaction and academic achievement and negatively associated with depression and problematic substance use ^{Footnote 10}. Hope can be nurtured through supportive relationships and positively contributes to well-being and resilience, thereby better enabling youth to manage, learn from and thrive in the face of stressful events and adversity.

For more information and additional resources, please visit the Preventing Problematic Substance Use through Positive Youth Development project website.

© Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of Health, 2019 | Cat.: HP10-28/2019E-PDF | ISBN: 978-0-660-30014-6 (EN-PDF) | Pub.: 180887

The series of resources includes

• An infographic – Beyond Health Education... Preventing Problematic Substance Use by Enhancing Students’ Well-Being
• Research briefs
  • Welcoming environments
  • Effective programming
• Whiteboard videos
  • Promoting well-being
  • Welcoming environments
  • Effective programming