Practice Profile: Formal Mentoring to Prevent Youth Substance Use

This practice encompasses programs that provide youths with formal supportive relationships and various positive, community-based activities and experiences to reduce their need to use alcohol and/or drugs. The practice is rated Effective for reducing the likelihood of alcohol initiation and reducing the likelihood of drug use initiation.

Practice Goals/Target Population

Research has found that by senior year of high school, almost 70 percent of students in the United States will have tasted alcohol, about half will have taken an illegal drug, and more than 20 percent will have used a prescription drug for a nonprescribed purpose (Erdem and Kaufman 2020). One method to prevent youth substance use is through mentoring, defined as “a relationship over a prolonged period of time between two or more people where an older, caring, more experienced individual provides help to the younger person as [they go] through life” (Center for Substance Abuse Prevention 2000, 2). The goal of mentoring programs that are designed specifically to prevent youth substance use is to reduce the time youths have to associate with users of alcohol and drugs, and give youths less need to use drugs and alcohol to alter their mood or please their peers.

Practice Components

Mentoring can affect targeted youth through a variety of programming and activities. To prevent youth substance use, mentoring programs often involve frequent contact with mentors; the training of mentors, who also receive ongoing supervision; and the behavioral change techniques designed to target specific problem behaviors that produce negative consequences. Programs also generally offer an array of activities linked to mentoring, to ensure that the mentee is involved often in positive community experiences.

Mentoring programs typically match youths with mentors and encourage mentors to meet regularly with mentees for support in various aspects of life; to educate mentees on health and substance abuse; to work with mentees to improve coping, problem-solving, and communication skills; to involve mentees in community service activities, such as visiting the elderly; and to offer cultural activities and educational services/tutoring. The underlying strategies are to keep the mentees busy and involved in positive experiences, and to provide them feedback and encouragement from the positive mentors with whom they bond.

Key Personnel

Mentors are “formal,” meaning they are assigned to youths as part of a program. The mentor–mentee relationship is often a symmetrical one of sharing ideas and experiences, with the mentor guiding the mentee to achieve behavior or goals that they define together.

The meta-analysis by Thompson, Lorenzetti, and Spragins (2011) was originally reviewed for CrimeSolutions in 2013 as part of the Mentoring for Youth Development practice. In 2022, as part of a re-review of the Mentoring for Youth Development practice, it was decided that Thompson, Lorenzetti, and Spragins (2011) would become a separate practice focused on Mentoring to Prevent Substance Use.

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Alley-Gating in Liverpool (England)

Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) Community-Based Mentoring (CBM) Program

Across Ages

School-Based Mentoring Program for At-Risk Middle School Youth

Rochester Resilience Project (RRP)

Promotor Pathway Program

SAM (Solution, Action, Mentorship) Program for Adolescent Girls

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?