Child health series
Drug misusing parents: key points for health professionals
J Keena, L H Alisonba Institute of General
Practice and Primary Care, University of Sheffield, Community Sciences
Centre, Northern General Hospital, Herries Road, Sheffield S5 7AU,
UK, b Sheffield Children's Hospital
Trust and Community Health Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10
2TH, UK
Correspondence to: Dr Keen J.Keen@sheffield.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
 |
Introduction |
|---|
Drug misuse is common, and users of illicit drugs tend to be young. Many have children. A serious drug misuse problem in the parents can be devastating for the lives of their children.1 Addiction to opiates, most commonly heroin, is one of the forms of drug misuse that is potentially most damaging to the child's home environment. Recent figures produced by the European Commission suggest that about 0.2-0.3% of European adults fulfil diagnostic criteria for heroin addiction at any given time,2 and higher rates exist in inner city areas. Department of Health figures suggest that heroin use is the form of drug misuse most commonly presented to treatment services in the United Kingdom.3
The financial pressure of obtaining large sums of money (typically
£10-100 a day) to buy heroin can lock a person into a daily cycle of
seeking out, buying, and using heroin, which can lead to poverty,
criminal
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Gance-Cleveland, B., Mays, M. Z.
(2008). School-Based Support Groups for Adolescents With a Substance-Abusing Parent. J Am Psychiatr Nurses Assoc
14: 297-309
[Abstract]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in ADC Online
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
