Good Practices
Selective prevention programme: The Heroic Journey: Ancient and Modern Stories to Grow by
Name of Programme:
The Heroic Journey: Ancient and Modern Stories to Grow ByTarget Population:
Selective.Setting:
Group counselling.Theoretic Basis:
? cognitive-behavioural prevention approach;
? theory of reasoned action;
? social learning theory.
Programme Description:
Focus:
Alcohol and illicit drug use.Goals:
Provide adolescents with useful knowledge and skills for resisting social influences to use alcohol and drugs. Reduce potential motivations to use alcohol and drugs by increasing general personal competence.
Objectives:
Address the major cognitive, attitudinal, psychological and social factors that are either empirically or conceptually related to alcohol and drug use.
Activities:
Culturally-focused training uses a combination of demonstration, behavioural rehearsal, feedback and reinforcement.
The mediums of live story-telling: video and peer leaders used to tell mythic and contemporary tales in the culturally-focused programme.
Content:
Each of the 15 sessions consisted of a major goal for the unit, measurable student objectives and classroom activities.
Taught students cognitive-behavioural skills for problem solving and decision-making, building self esteem, resisting peer pressure, managing stress and anxiety, communicating effectively and developing positive personal relationships.
The culturally-focused curriculum was on preferences, socio-demographic features and interpersonal characteristics of high-risk youth. The material was presented using stories to teach the skills and demonstrating their positive consequences through the story structure. The students saw the functionality and meaning of the skill, enhancing the observational learning process.
Contact Time:
15 sessions at an average of two per week.Leader Type and Training Provided:
Trainers were hired for the culturally-focused programme.
Peer leaders were selected by the school system and given a weekend workshop that provided an overview of the curriculum. They also had bi-weekly practice sessions to practice the role plays during the semester.
In the culturally-focused programme, a professional storyteller accompanied by music was used to relate the ancient stories at student assemblies.
Videos were used to tell the contemporary stories, and peer leaders demonstrated scenes from the videos that taught each of the skills.
Results:
? the prevalence of current alcohol and drug use among minority adolescents before the implementation of the interventions was relatively low, therefore the focus was on future behavioural intentions for alcohol and drug use;
? the findings were primarily related to intention to drink beer, wine or hard liquor or use other drugs in the future;
? was effective in decreasing intentions to drink beer or wine in the future;
? the cultural approach helped lower intentions to drink hard liquor;
? several mediating variables were affected: the students in the prevention programmes had significantly higher anti-drinking, anti-marijuana, anti-cocaine and other drug attitudes than the control groups;
? the risk taking scores for the intervention group were lower than those in the control group;
? the study did not demonstrate efficacy on the skills measured for either intervention group compared with those of the control group.
Author's Comments:
Self report of skills may be difficult for students of this age group; the measures may not have corresponded well to the components of the curricula; exposure to prevention programmes may provide a protective factor related to the future initiation of alcohol and drug use. Project limitations: the relatively small group of students and the inability to determine the relative effectiveness of these prevention strategies for the various ethnic-racial subgroups in the sample.
Reviewer's Comments:
The programme did appear to address some protective factors and recognized that a different approach may be more effective for minority youth; had a focus on skill development; the programme was interactive; the cultural component, especially, used interesting and engaging techniques; the programme was extensive and covered a significant period of time; and the leaders were trained and hired specifically for their skills.
Associated Studies:
Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Among Minority Youths (1994); Botvin, Schinke, Epstein, Diaz.
Source:
G. Roberts, et al., (2001). Preventing Substance Use Problems: A Compendium of Best Practices. Health Canada.