African-American adolescents
experience disproportionate rates of negative consequences of substance use
despite using substances at average or below-average rates. Due to
under-representation of African-American adolescents in etiological literature,
risk and protective processes associated with their substance use require
further study. This study examines the role of parental support in adolescents’
conduct problems (CPs), depressive symptoms (DSs), and alcohol and marijuana
use in a national sample and a high-risk sample of African-American
adolescents. In both samples, parental support was inversely related to
adolescent CPs, DSs, and alcohol and marijuana use. CPs, but not DSs, partially
mediated the relation of parental support to substance use. Results were
consistent across the national and high-risk samples, suggesting that the
protective effect of parental support applies to African-American adolescents
from a range of demographic backgrounds.
...This study demonstrated that African-American adolescents
who report more supportive parenting experience lower levels of DSs, CPs,
marijuana use, and alcohol use. This was equally true in the SCHOO-BE sample,
who are at high risk for mental health and substance use problems due to high
rates of prenatal substance exposure, poverty, custodial changes, and violence
exposure, and in the national sample of African-American adolescents from the
MTF study. Our findings are consistent with previous work that has demonstrated
the power of supportive parenting for high-risk African-American adolescents
and with studies that have found that CPs but not DSs are associated with
alcohol and marijuana use.32,33
Our findings add to the literature in two
respects. First, they demonstrate the role of reduced CPs as a mediator of the
previously identified protective effect of parental support on adolescent
alcohol and marijuana use. Adolescents who feel more supported by their parents
have lower levels of CPs, and those who have lower levels of CPs use less
alcohol and marijuana. Second, our results provide further evidence that
parental support is protective against mental health problems and alcohol and
marijuana use even in families that face high levels of familial and contextual
risk. Thus, parental support is an important target for preventive
interventions with African-American adolescents, including high-risk samples.14 Several
authors have highlighted the need to identify mediators of the effects of
culturally relevant variables on developmentally important outcomes, such as
alcohol and marijuana use,54,55 particularly
existing protective processes, such as supportive parenting, which can be
leveraged in prevention programs.56 Leveraging
the family may be particularly important given that African-American
adolescents are less likely than White adolescents to receive school-based
substance use prevention.57 Successful
prevention will help to reduce more serious consequences in adulthood,
including substance abuse disorders, criminal involvement, and financial
instability in adulthood.56,58 Prevention
programs for African-American adolescents are more important than ever because
the prevalence of marijuana use by this population has increased in recent
years, while the overall national prevalence of marijuana use by eighth graders
has decreased. In 2003, the first of the three years included in the current
study, 13.0% of African-American eighth graders reported marijuana use during
the past year, a prevalence comparable to the overall national prevalence of
12.8% among all racial and ethnic groups. In 2014, the prevalence of marijuana
use among African-American eighth graders had risen to 13.2%, while the overall
national prevalence of marijuana use among eighth graders had dropped to 11.7%.
The prevalence of alcohol use among African-American eighth graders has
historically been and remains lower than the national average (17.8% and 20.8%,
respectively).4 Additional
research on the effects of parental support in the current context of more
prevalent marijuana use is warranted...
Full article at: http://goo.gl/FNQ7xs
By:
1Department of Kinesiology and Health
Education, Population Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA.
2Department of Psychology, Institute for
Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
3College of Nursing, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
4Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, Wayne
State University, Detroit, MI, USA.
5Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA.
6Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Neurosciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA.
7Department of Pharmacy Practice, Wayne
State University, Detroit, MI, USA.
8Department of Family Medicine, Wayne State
University, Detroit, MI, USA.
9Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State
University, Detroit, MI, USA.
CORRESPONDENCE: Email: ude.saxetu.nitsua@ykswolsam
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