Youth in Recovery: Navigating Challenges, Change, and Choices with David Rotenberg, MA, MBA, CAC DiplomateYouth in Recovery: Navigating Challenges, Change, and Choices with David Rotenberg, MA, MBA, CAC Diplomate
Recovery Recharged with Ellen Stewart Pushy Broad from the Bronx
In today's episode, we dive deep into the heart of adolescent and young adult substance abuse recovery, exploring the unique hurdles our young people face in comparison to adults. We'll examine the pivotal role of peer influence, family dynamics, and...
27:09•25 Sept 2024
Youth in Recovery: Challenges, Change and Choices with David Rotenberg
Episode Overview
- Today’s cannabis products are far more potent, contributing to issues such as cannabis‑induced psychosis in young people.
- Social media massively expands peer influence, increasing anxiety, depression and body image concerns for both boys and girls.
- Effective youth treatment requires a mix of therapies, including group, individual, experiential modalities, education support and strong psychiatric care.
- Family systems often share the young person’s mental health and substance use issues, making family therapy a crucial part of treatment.
- Longer, multidisciplinary engagement in care tends to produce better long‑term outcomes for adolescents and young adults in recovery.
“If you save or help a kid, a young person get sober and get their mental health needs in check today, you are impacting their current family, their future family, the society we live in, the academic society that they are from, the legal system and the health care system in the most profound way.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation on *Recovery Recharged* focuses squarely on teens and young adults, with Ellen Stewart talking to clinical veteran David Rotenberg about what youth are dealing with right now. David, newly appointed chief clinical officer at Turnbridge in New Haven, Connecticut, brings nearly three decades of experience and his own history of recovery.
He points out that while youth cannabis use rates may look flat, the reality is scary: "Today's marijuana and THC products are 50 to 100 times more potent than yesteryears," and he routinely sees young people hospitalised for cannabis‑induced psychosis. Add in widespread vaping, body image worries and relentless social media pressure, and you get a teen landscape far more intense than the one many parents remember.
The episode digs into why girls are now showing up in treatment in greater numbers than boys, with David noting that "girls are being recognized for their own mental health problems like never before." He explains that effective care for adolescents can’t be just a circle of chairs and a few groups.
Instead, it needs an integrated mix of therapies: traditional group and individual work, 12‑step support, equine and art therapy, music, fitness and nutrition, plus on‑site schooling or college support. Family involvement is non‑negotiable. David stresses that a young person’s issues are often a "symptom of the family system's existing pathology," so any serious programme must work with parents and siblings too.
He also underlines that treatment is a long game, not "cutting the cast off a broken leg" and calling it done; longer engagement in comprehensive care leads to better outcomes. If you’re a parent, professional, or simply someone who cares about young people, this episode gives plenty of food for thought on what real support can look like. Are you ready to think differently about how adolescents and young adults are helped into recovery?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.