Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website to its version as of 12:00 AM on January 29, 2025. Information on this page may be modified and/or removed in the future subject to the terms of the court’s order and implemented consistent with applicable law. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from truth. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology due to the harms and divisiveness it causes. This page does not reflect reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Mentoring Adolescents to Prevent Drug and Alcohol Use

About this resource:

Systematic Review

Source: The Cochrane Collaborative

Last Reviewed: November 2011

Workgroups: Substance Use Workgroup

In this Cochrane systematic review, the Cochrane Collaborative found that mentoring adolescents could possibly help prevent them from starting to use alcohol or drugs. However, the researchers noted that because the review included studies in which participants were young and not likely to use drugs or alcohol, the mentoring interventions were unlikely to be effective. They also noted that the studies assessed formal programs but that most mentoring is informal.

Read more about this resource

Objectives related to this resource (6)

Reduce the proportion of adolescents who drank alcohol in the past month — SU‑04
Little or no detectable change
Reduce the proportion of adolescents who used marijuana in the past month — SU‑06
Getting worse
Reduce the proportion of people under 21 years who engaged in binge drinking in the past month — SU‑09
Little or no detectable change
Reduce the proportion of people who had opioid use disorder in the past year — SU‑18
Improving
Reduce the proportion of people who misused a prescription pain reliever in the past year — SU‑19
Little or no detectable change
Reduce the proportion of prescription pain reliever misuse initiation in the past year — SU‑20
Target met or exceeded

Suggested Citation

1.

Thomas, R.E., Lorenzetti, D. & Spragins, W. (2011). Mentoring adolescents to prevent drug and alcohol use. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2011 (11). DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD007381.pub2.