6. Discussion
depression, drug abuse, deficit lens
The effects of substance use continue to be disproportionately felt by adolescents in Nigeria’s inner cities. Adolescents in inner cities frequently have less opportunity to access high-quality prevention intervention services due to a lack of resources. This is partly because there are not many financial options available, and because programs continue to see adolescents through a deficit lens rather than a framework focused on their strengths. Therefore, the educational empowerment intervention in this study can help to understand the protective variables in inner adolescent drug use prevention and discuss how to increase protective aspects and decrease risk factors. Overall, 150 adolescents participated in the intervention, whereas 148 adolescents made up the control group. The empowerment education approach was used to teach lessons during the intervention’s eleven weekly sessions. According to the published literature, this study is the first of its kind to develop and test the empowerment education intervention for inner adolescents. This study also adds to the growing body of research on educational empowerment programs’ effects on inner adolescents’ 30-day substance use prevention. Importantly, this study moves away from “risk-focused” research and prevention, emphasizing empowerment as a tool to engage adolescents in their community and as a kind of prevention. Researchers, prevention specialists, and social workers all need to think about how to give adolescents more agency and tap into the collective wisdom and resources that help foster community and adolescent partnerships for prevention.Furthermore, these findings provide a preliminary understanding of the relationship between the intervention for educational empowerment and risk and protective factors and 30-day substance use. The findings indicate that the intervention appears to be moderated by pre-intervention adolescent substance use at both 2 and 3 months post-intervention. The intervention had effects on substance use. In other words, the results showed adolescents reported less depression and substance use, as well as higher peer support, parental support, social competence, and self-esteem at post-test and 3-month follow-ups as compared to the pre-intervention period. It seems that an educational program based on the empowerment model has been effective in improving the average scores of the aforementioned constructs and total empowerment. Bagheri [The outcomes of changes in protective and risk factors over 2- and 3-month follow-ups also revealed limited efficacy for the final three sessions of the intervention, which is known as the action and reflection stage. We asked adolescents to participate in a problem-posing and community action process at this stage. During these sessions, adolescents have expanded the educational dialogue and made visible their concern for drug abuse. However, some issues still need to be addressed in how empowerment strategies can have a better understanding of the action–reflection–action spiral that produces change. A model of empowerment education recognizes the need for external leadership in providing resources and expertise, but we did not hold any sessions to foster conversation and teamwork with community members (i.e., adolescents, parents, and teachers) so that shared visions and community-based leadership might emerge. This session can create a supportive community that can investigate failures and successes, and identify obstacles, yet still maintains motivation to address the root causes of drug use among adolescents.Investigating the effects of educational empowerment intervention revealed that following the study, participants’ social competence significantly improved, indicating that education is a key factor in determining adolescents’ social competence. The considerable difference between self-esteem scores before and after the intervention suggested that education in this study had a significant effect on improving adolescents’ self-esteem. The difference between self-esteem scores before and after the intervention was significant, indicating that this study’s empowering education significantly improved the self-esteem of adolescents. According to research by Moshki [The results suggest clinicians utilize inner adolescents’ strengths and those of their communities as a tool for reducing risk behaviors such as drug use. This intervention puts into focus ways in which to reduce substance use among adolescents and consider adolescents within the scope of developing and planning prevention–intervention initiatives. This intervention provides experimental participants with opportunities for developing a critical awareness and engaging in opportunities for leadership and social change [The study also found a substantial difference in drop-out rates comparing males and females. It probably occurred because of the withdrawal of male participants who withdrew when they became aware of the heavy tasks imposed by the intervention and is therefore unlikely linked to the development of substance use in the underlying male adolescents.