Mgr. and Bc. Radek Němec

We see the growing connection between adolescent mental health problems and the use of psychoactive substances as one of the most pressing issues of our time. The public debate often includes topics such as kratom, electronic cigarettes, vaping, THC, and many other new products. All of this is important, of course, but if we focus only on substances, we miss the essence of the problem.

Young people very often do not react only to the substance itself. They react to the environment in which they grow up, and this is where it is necessary to say something unpleasant out loud, or perhaps unpleasant to someone, the child often does not only carry his own problem, he is often the bearer of the atmosphere of the entire family.

And so, at the seminar on March 4, 2026 dedicated to psychomodulatory substances, it was said that the protection of young people cannot be based only on bans, panic or moralizing. The result is that we need high-quality prevention, accessible professional help, better information for parents and schools and a realistic approach to how today's teenagers really live. It was repeatedly emphasized at the seminar that intimidation campaigns and one-off lectures have little effect, although former users who are now abstaining may appear, who can attract attention with their compelling stories. Nevertheless, it is still shown that long-term and proven programs that correspond to the reality of the lives of children and adolescents make sense.

From the point of view of psychotherapy, however, it is often necessary to go even deeper. Our therapist Radek Němec pointed out at the seminar that the problem often does not concern only the child or adolescent himself, but the entire family system. And this is where the core of the problem is. The child very often reflects tension, chaos, unspoken conflicts, what is often kept silent about in families, emotional unavailability or unhealthy ways of regulation that he has been experiencing at home for a long time.

In other words, we can say that children do not learn only from what we tell them. They learn mainly by imitation and by watching how adults deal with stress, frustration, loneliness, anger or fatigue. They see whether people at home talk or remain silent. Whether tension is resolved through relationship or escape. Whether the parent manages to be present or regularly loses themselves in their mobile phone, work, alcohol, medication, food, shopping or in their own disconnection.

And here is perhaps one of the least pleasant truths of the present, when some child addictions do not begin with the child, but with adults who refuse to admit their own addictive functioning. It does not have to be alcohol or other substances right away. It can start completely innocently, when parents are permanently glued to their mobile phones, with emotional absence, a compulsive need to escape, an inability to be truly available in a relationship. The child then grows up in an environment where escaping from discomfort is a common model. And later they just look for their own tool. One child reaches for a mobile phone, another for a vape, another for kratom, self-harm, or a combination of all of these.

In family therapy, something that parents don't like to hear is often revealed, which is that the problematic child is sometimes the most visible symptom of the family, not its only source of problems. When attention also starts to turn to the parents, their relationship, boundaries, communication or daily habits, it can be really unpleasant. It is often easier to point at the child and say that they can't handle emotions, authority or substances. It is much harder to ask yourself what exactly the child has been observing at home for years and what they take away from it as the norm.

This does not mean blaming the parents, of course. It means stopping pretending that the child grows up in a vacuum. If we really want to help young people, it is not enough to regulate the market for psychomodulatory substances or improve school prevention. We must be willing to look where society least likes to look, namely into the aforementioned families, into their daily functioning, into their silence, overload, disconnection and subtle pathologies that appear to be ordinary life.

Therefore, we consider it crucial that the debate on psychomodulatory substances is not limited to the products themselves and their regulation. Equally important is work with the family system, early prevention, support for schools, parental awareness, and the availability of psychotherapeutic and addiction care that can understand the child in the context of the relationships in which he or she lives.

The seminar also resulted in several basic recommendations for further practice, such as recommendations to strengthen proven primary prevention programs and their systematic evaluation, improve the awareness of parents, educators and other adults about new psychoactive substances, create clearer rules for schools and strengthen the capacities of prevention methodologists, support coordination between schools, professional services and local governments, and reduce the shadow economy along with greater cooperation between regulators and responsible sellers.

So today's question is not only what young people use, but also what they absorb daily at home, what they learn to consider normal there, and what pain or emptiness they then try to regulate in their own way. As long as we only want to treat the child and not the system that shapes them, we will often only extinguish the consequences.