High-Risk Behaviors

High-risk behaviors are those acts that place individuals at a greater disadvantage to abuse or depend on substances. These behaviors are often health compromising acts that are preexisting or comorbid with substance use. High-risk behaviors are risk factors that, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), can be both additive and potent. As an additive effect, the more risk behaviors a person has, the more the chance for substance abuse. In terms of potency, the presence of some high-risk behaviors leads to a greater chance of substance abuse than does the presence of other high-risk behaviors. Identification of these behaviors is important to substance abuse prevention, treatment, and recovery because if not targeted for prevention or addressed in treatment, these behaviors can hinder efforts to address problematic substance use and interrupt the recovery process. The effectiveness of prevention and treatment models depends greatly on proper identification of high-risk behaviors, the proper development of treatment models, and the proper application of model components to address these behaviors.

Prevention of substance abuse begins with the identification of the behaviors that increase the likelihood that individuals will initiate the substance use process. Several high-risk behaviors become consequent to substance use and must be addressed in treatment, and individuals must understand the extent of their high-risk behaviors as they go through the process of recovery. As such, research efforts attempt to identify these behaviors within specified populations to provide evidence-based prevention, intervention, and treatment models to intercept and divert these behaviors when targeting substance abuse. High-risk behaviors can exist at the individual, family, peer, and community levels and tend to vary across youth and adult populations. It should be noted that individual level risk behaviors can be influenced by family, peer, and community high-risk behaviors and vice versa.