Dr. Patricia Halligan and Dr. Laurence Westreich discuss the amount of leverage parents have with their children regarding cannabis use.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Patricia Halligan:
Parents oftentimes don't even know they have leverage. They'll say to me, "Well, he won't go. He won't go to see a counselor. He won't go for a drug evaluation. He won't go to school. He won't give it up." And I'm wondering, what do you think's going on that they don't know they have any leverage. And what do you think gets in the way of using it?
Dr. Laurence Westreich:
I think you make a good point. I think on two levels, parents underestimate the amount of leverage that they have. I think the prevention experts say very clearly that you want your child to have in his or her head that drum beat from mom and dad "that we think this is bad, this is dangerous". So you're trying to push off the first use of the substance from that 12 or 13 year old till he's 16, 17, 18. So that's the first thing. From a prevention perspective, even though the kid may say, "I don't care what you say, I'm not listening to you" … they're listening to you. They can't help it. But secondly, when the kid actually has a problem, I think you're right. Parents have much more leverage than they believe.
And I've kids too, and certainly try to be empathic and caring and supportive of them. But there are times when parents need to put their foot down. And that does come when the child's function is impaired, especially at a late adolescent stage, when that function is going to really tell us what's gonna happen in the rest of that person's life. So if a adolescent needs to go to an IOP, if he or she needs to go to see an evaluation with a therapist, if he or she needs to go to inpatient, I think parents need to, at some point, require that. And that's a really hard thing to do. And a lot of my work is helping families, approach that in an empathic caring, but serious way. In the same way that you would approach your child, if God forbid, he or she had cancer, I mean, it's serious. And the fact that you don't want to get to treatment doesn't mean that you don't need to have it.
Dr. Laurence Westreich Bio:
Laurence M. Westreich, M.D. is a psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of patients diagnosed with Substance Use Disorders (SUDs).
Dr. Westreich completed a residency in Psychiatry at New York’s Beth Israel Medical Center and a two-year fellowship in addiction psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital. He is board–certified in general psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry.
Dr. Westreich is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, and the author of Helping the Addict you Love (Simon and Schuster, 2007), and A Parent’s Guide to Teen Addiction (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017). Dr. Westreich is Past President of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and serves as Consultant on Behavioral Health and Addiction to the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
Leave a Reply