中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: Substance abuse has become increasingly diverse in recent years. Many abusers have moved from using one to multiple substances. It is necessary to develop a multiple substances control policy. The first task towards this goal is to identify the common protective and risk factors for various substance abuse behaviors. For nearly a decade, building social capital has been viewed as an important strategy for disease prevention and health promotion. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of social capital on substance abuse and to try to resolve the constraints that single substance prevention policies have encountered (i.e., most substances have a variety of substitutes). Methods: We review and integrate empirical research based on a search conducted on the ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed, and Airiti Library databases to clarify the following issues: What is social capital? Can social capital reduce the risk of substance abuse? What is the mechanism? Can social capital be a useful preventive strategy for abuse of multiple substances? Results: The core essence of social capital is interpersonal relationships and interactions; its dimensions of structure and function are inseparable. Social capital is protective against many kinds of substance abuse behaviors. Planning multiple substance prevention strategies by building social capital may be integral to preventing abusers from moving to other substances after implementation of the intervention program. However, the functional elements of social capital may have a different impact on different structures. Conclusions: Health educators should apply social capital in multi-substance abuse prevention, but they should consider both the dimensions of structure and function in strategy development. We suggest future research should focus on: (1) identifying detailed indicators of social capital; (2) exploring the interactions between different forms of social capital; (3) analyzing various effects of social capital on substance abuse; (4) designing longitudinal research to explore causality; (5) exploring the effectiveness of multi-substance abuse prevention plans with social capital. We hope to stimulate discussion on preventing and treating smoking, alcoholism, and drug abuse.