Substance-related coping behaviours among youth during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic
Objective: As impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold, research is needed to understand how school-aged youth are coping with COVID-19-related changes and disruptions to daily life. Among a sample of Canadian youth, our objective was to examine the mental health factors associated with u...
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
| Publicado: |
Elsevier
2021
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/e27ad1dc8dcd48f9ba5e379aaf62f635 |
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| Sumario: | Objective: As impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold, research is needed to understand how school-aged youth are coping with COVID-19-related changes and disruptions to daily life. Among a sample of Canadian youth, our objective was to examine the mental health factors associated with using substances to cope with COVID-19-related changes, taking account of expected sex differences. Methods: We used online data collected from 7150 students in the COMPASS study, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (May–July 2020) in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, Canada. We specified a sex-stratified, generalized linear mixed model to estimate the likelihood of engagement in substance-related coping behaviours, while testing for the effects of students’ mental health, individual characteristics, and school neighborhood characteristics. Results: Twelve percent of students (13.4% of females, 9.9% of males) in our sample reported using cannabis, alcohol, cigarettes, and/or vaping to help cope with COVID-19-related changes. Regardless of sex, students with greater depressive symptoms were more likely to engage in substance-related coping (aORFemale = 1.04, 95 %CI[1.01–1.07]; aORMale = 1.06, 95 %CI[1.013–1.11]). Among females, better psychosocial wellbeing was protective against engagement in substance related-coping (aOR = 0.96, 95 %CI[0.94–0.98]), controlling for current substance use. Conclusions: Canadian school-aged youth with generally poor mental health may be more likely to have engaged in substance use to help cope with COVID-19-related changes during the first wave of the pandemic, and female youth may be at disproportionate risk of engaging in the behaviour. Ongoing evaluation of the impacts of COVID-19 on youth health is required. |
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