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Sandhu, Monique

University of British Columbia

Background: The toxic drug crisis in British Columbia, Canada has accelerated efforts to expand residential substance use treatment beds for young people between the ages of 14 and 19 in Greater Vancouver. While various barriers to accessing residential substance use treatment among young people who use drugs have been well documented in the literature, little research has examined how young people, and in particular adolescents, navigate and experience these treatment programs. Methods: This qualitative study draws on a critical phenomenological approach to describe and contextualize experiences and understandings of residential substance use treatment among 35 young people ages 14 to 19 in Vancouver. I thematically analyze data from in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with participants attending, just about to attend, or having previously attended “Cypress Place”, a local residential treatment center, between October 2019 and May 2021. Results: Findings underscore that young people are actively engaged in making, unmaking, and remaking their senses of self and social worlds prior to and throughout residential treatment. Many participants envisioned and experienced residential treatment as a time and space in which to actualize future selves. However, once they were in residential treatment, most young people encountered challenges in navigating past and ongoing traumas and complex social dynamics, which at times undermined their evolving self- and world-making projects. Conclusions: This study demonstrates how adolescents actively engage in re-making themselves and their social worlds in and across settings, allowing for a re-imagining of youth treatment and recovery programming and services that better align with the needs, priorities, and desires of young people themselves.

Thesis/Dissertation

eng

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0435941

Master of Science - MSc

Medicine, Faculty of; Medicine, Department of

2023-11

Graduate

DSpace