Social Capital, Substance Use Disorder & Depression among Youths
BACKGROUND:
Social
capital - the network of social connections that exists among people - is known
to be related to depression and substance use among adults. However, little is
known about these relationships among adolescents, even though this age group
is vulnerable due to factors of peer pressure, family, neighborhood, and
maturational changes.
OBJECTIVES:
To
evaluate the associations among social capital, substance use disorder and
depression on a sample of 17 705 respondents between the ages of 12 and 17 in
the 2009 National Survey of Drug Use and Health.
METHODS:
Structural
equation modeling was used to examine social capital; responses to 48 items
differentiated into two factors that measured structural social and cognitive
social capital. Adolescent depression and substance use disorder were measured
as past-year major depressive episodes and substance use disorder according to
DSM-IV criteria.
RESULTS:
Structural
social capital was associated with substance use disorder and depression. Cognitive social capital was
associated with substance use disorder, but not with
depression. Substance use disorder mediated the
association between structural and cognitive social capital and depression.
CONCLUSION:
There
was support for associations among youth structural and cognitive social
capital, substance use disorder and depression. These findings suggest that
additional research of a longitudinal nature is needed to determine causal
connections among social capital, depression and substance use disorder for
adolescents.
- 1 Institutional Research , Loyola University Maryland , Baltimore , MD , USA.
- 2 The Evaluation Center , Western Michigan University , Kalamazoo , MI , USA.
- Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse. 2016 Jan 25:1-9.
No comments:
Post a Comment