On Tuesday, March 30, I attended the lecture on Adolescent Health Issues in the PACARDO region. The speaker for this session was James C. Anthony, who works for the Department of Epidemiology at Michigan State University. He studied Mental Hygiene in college, and spent almost 30 years at Johns Hopkins University. He told us that epidemiology is the study of what afflicts people. His said his job entails being a disease detective - one who searches out the causes of infectious and non-infectious diseases and epidemics. The focus point of his lecture was drug dependency syndrome amongst adolescents in the PACARDO region (Panama, Central American, and the Dominican Republic).
Drug dependency is a syndrome, and can involve the following: disturbances of the mental life, disturbances of behavior, and manifestations of neuroadaptation secondary to drug exposures. Also, he told us that drugs, as a behavior, are a source of reinforcement, which explains in part why people continue to use drugs. The studies he conducted show that the PACARDO region has an increased access to drugs like Marijuana and Cocaine, due to the decreased demand from the United States. Anthony said that the U.S. has a very powerful influence on what these regions produce, meaning drugs. When our demand decline, they still continued to produce the drugs, but they are falling into different hands. The study he conducted in the PACARDO region tried to determine how to extend children's lives and make them healthy, as well as determining if shielding and resistance-strengthening works in avoid drug dependency. Resistance-strengthening is popular in the U.S., with programs like DARE that help kids say no. Shielding, however, is the concept of helping kids avoid any interaction with drugs, and falls a lot on the parents. He also said there is a large focus, currently, on the concept of behavior autarcesis, which are non-specific mechanisms that shield people from agents or that are resistance-strengthening when agent exposure occurs.
