Lack of self-efficacy and engagement could push young people into substance abuse, a conference on addictions among adolescents heard yesterday.

Senior lecturer Damian Spiteri was speaking about the needs of substance-abusing young people in Malta at a seminar organised by the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

He referred to a study among teenagers, aged 15 to 17, who reached out to Caritas Malta, which attempted to give voice to young people with a view to contributing to the provision of targeted services.

Dr Spiteri pointed out that those who took part in the study acknowledged that addiction inflicted not only a cost on the addicts themselves, but also their families and society.

When asked why young people took drugs, they mentioned alcoholism and gambling in the family among others, but one particular reason that stood out was lack of engagement.

Dr Spiteri said respondents spoke of the consumption of drugs as pointing towards some issue they had with making friends and being accepted.

The notion of social needs and peer pressure came out very strongly, he said, adding that the issue of lack of self-efficacy and the fact that they did not believe in themselves was also highlighted.

He asked what interventions can contribute to possibly help teenagers at this early and vulnerable stage of the drug-taking process.

Dr Spiteri suggested projects that enabled youths to identify with their school, which for some with a chaotic lifestyle was the only place that provided some sense of structure. School curricula could also emphasise social competence – although the country had come a long way, the curricula were still exam-centred and based on academic success, and this could come at a cost of emotional-empowerment.

Another speaker at the conference, clinical chairman of the Department of Psychiatry within the Health Ministry Anton Grech, provided a snapshot of substance misuse among child and adolescent inpatients.

He referred to a study that looked at children and adolescent inpatients at Mount Carmel Hospital’s young people psychiatric unit or the adult acute psychiatric wards between 2010 and 2014.

In all, there were 212 admissions to inpatient services, 102 of which were recorded to have misused one or more substances.

For the remaining 110 cases there was missing or incomplete information available.

An interesting aspect that came to light was a higher percentage of recorded cases living in socially deprived areas and single-parent households.

Almost half of the recorded cases were from single-parent households, while a fifth were from State-run homes or facilities.

Dr Grech added that according to these findings, the prevalence of substance misuse among child and adolescent patients with a mental disorder could be seen to be in line with other countries.

But this study had also revealed the pressing need to develop research systems and conduct more detailed enquiries.

These results were eventually taken into consideration for the improvement of the services, he told this newspaper.