Welcome to the 21st WCP Virtual Congress Program Scheduling

Adolescents are considered as a high-risk group towards impulsive health-risk behaviors. These include substance use and addictive behaviors (e.g., gambling and online games). The COVID-19 pandemic induces psychological burden among adolescents and exacerbates the risks, leading to higher engagement in aforementioned health-risk behaviors. Escapism to substances, gambling, and games allow the adolescents to find some acute emotional relief, albeit pathologically. Additionally, these behaviors are majorly influenced by accessibility, availability, and presence of prevention and management programs. Particularly, the latter will be evident between high-income and lower income countries, complicating the movement towards global mental health services. Prof. Assanangkornchai will present findings on the trends of alcohol, tobacco and drug use, drink-driving, assaults, depression and suicidality derived from a series of national school surveys in Thailand in 2007-2020. This reflects minimal changes of health-risk behaviors among recent generations despite of tremendous prevention efforts and policy interventions. Dr. Siste will present the emerging data from Indonesia, as a middle-income country, regarding the changes of substances use and gaming behaviors during COVID-19 among youths. The presentation will highlight on the prevalence estimates, preference of substance types during crisis, and initial data on delivery of online behavioral therapy against addictive behaviors in youths. Prof. Saunders will end the series with a presentation on the growing evidence of declined youth drinking in high-income countries, including Australia. Hypotheses explaining these declines, relationship with the trends of other health-risk behaviors and comparison with LMIC will be included.