Life skills training in school
Prevention programmers have aimed to prevent children and adolescents from substance use. Substance use is the dangerous use of psychoactive drugs. Substance use has become a mutual thing for many youths. Evidence shows that those who use substances in their early life end up using the drugs at higher levels later in life. Substance use is associated with many adverse outcomes, such as mental health, violence, aggressive behavior. The life skills training program favors children and adolescents who are under substance influence.
Elementary school students have dispersed courses that incorporate life skills training. Life skills training session having forty or forty -five minutes. The content of the programmer is delivered using the cognitive-behavioral skills like coachings, demonstrations, rehearsal, social reinforcement and issuing of assignments. Life skills are abilities for positive conduct that empower individuals to deal with the demands and challenges of life effectively. Life Skill programmer has a segment into which they introduce the drug resistance skills to the students.
Life skills training in school has been very effective. It has enabled most students and children under substance use to evaluate their actions, views, and feelings critically; hence they behave responsibly. They are also able to deal with the challenge of substance consumption. Through life skills training, the substance user’s social interactions with society improve, enabling them to identify the areas that endanger their lives. The esteem and confidence of adolescents under substance improves use through the life skill training program.
Evidence of life skills effectiveness has been ascertained through researches.
Trained personnel is assigned to take through life skills to the children and adolescents who are under substance. For one to facilitate through a life skill decision to adolescents, training in teaching, counseling, or that of a health professional. Teachers manuals, student guides, audiotapes, and videos are some of the necessary materials that ensure the completion of a life skill session. They make life skills sessions to be realistic. For instance, if the students watch a video, they get a clear image of what they are learning. Open discussions result, and students give their different opinion regarding different themes. Their facilitator, on the other hand, gives their ideas, which usually are neutral and very educative. A user is likely to spot the child’s health problems quickly, providing room for the child to access medical assistance soonest possible.
Life skills can be evaluated by the use of a questionnaire to see its effectiveness. A study conducted on the effects of substance abuse on 60 students of Gonad medical university is a perfect example of how to determine the effectiveness of life skills training. A random quota sample of students filled in two questionnaires, which included drug abuse preventive behavior.Each participant was a student of Gonabad medical university who had joined the university in the second semester in the year 2007 and had consented to attend drug workshops. The questionnaire included parents’ educational, level, father’s job, age, gender, and habitation. It also included preventive drug behavior such as self-awareness, the ability to say no, stress management, side effects of drug abuse, and decisiveness. The researchers distributed questionnaires to the target groups before and after the lifeskill training workshops. The polls were encoded so that the examinees could be interviewed four years after an educational intervention. Researchers analyzed data using SPSS and T-test and chi-test. Data were analyzed using T-test and chi-square distribution. There was a significant relationship between a father’s education level of a father and drug abuse prevention. The T-test results indicated that there was a substantial difference after intervention p (<0.36,0.001>).
Conclusion
lifeskill training promotes knowledge about substance abuse and preventive measures. It also decreases risk factors that cause drug abuse. This programmer reduces abstract norms that encourage substance use among adolescents.