Social network isolation mediates associations between risky symptoms and substance use in the high school transition

"I Like the Vibes it Gives": Adolescent Perspectives on Cannabis Billboards and Print Advertising in Nevada

An influx of laws permitting recreational cannabis sales in the US has allowed for increased advertising. The purpose of this study was to describe how adolescents perceive outdoor and print cannabis advertising and to identify aspects of advertising that are appealing or eye-catching, focusing on five themes: price promotion, sex appeal, wellness, party, and text-only. We recruited adolescents ages 11-17 to participate in seven focus groups (44 participants) from 2019 to 2020. Participants viewed cannabis advertisements and responses were summarized using deductive thematic analysis. The party-themed advertisements were the most salient to participants, who desired to emulate the behaviors shown. Participants favored ads featuring young people and containing multiple colors. Participants disliked advertisements perceived to portray misleading or contradictory messages, such as the promotion of physical activity or use of sex appeal, and ads perceived to lack authenticity. Identification of youth appealing features can help inform cannabis advertising regulations.

Reciprocal links between marijuana use and school adjustment in Black and White rural adolescents

Although research has established that school adjustment is associated with marijuana use (MU) in adolescence, few studies have tested these associations bidirectionally. Using random intercepts cross-lagged panel modeling, this study examined reciprocal associations between MU and school adjustment across 8th to 10th grade, including the transition to high school. Participants included 5470 rural adolescents (59% White, 41% Black) aged 12-17 years in 2002-2005. School adjustment factors predicted subsequent MU (i.e., higher self-reported grades were protective for Black and White youth; valuing education was protective for Black youth; school behavior problems predicted increased MU across the transition to high school for White youth). MU had several adverse effects on school adjustment, particularly during the transition to high school.

Internalizing and externalizing pathways to high-risk substance use and geographic location in Australian adolescents

One specific instantiation of the storm-and-stress view of adolescence is the idea that “normal” adolescence involves high-risk substance use behaviors. However, although uptake of some substance use behaviors is more common during adolescence than other life stages, it is clear that not all adolescents engage in risky substance use—and among those who do, there is much variation in emotional, behavioral, and contextual precursors of this behavior. One such set of predictors forms the internalizing pathway to substance use disorder, whereby internalizing symptoms in childhood such as negative affect and anxiety set off a chain of consequences culminating in high-risk substance use in late adolescence. However, findings linking internalizing symptoms to substance use are mixed, and it is clear that this link varies across adolescents and contexts. One heretofore unanswered question is whether and how geographic location, specifically whether the adolescent lives in an urban or rural location, moderates this link. The current report is a secondary analysis of data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC; N = 2,285), in which we examined the link between internalizing symptoms in childhood and initiation of substance use through age 19. Using a multiple event process survival mixture model (MEPSUM), we identified three trajectories of substance use initiation in adolescence: one (65.7% of the sample) characterized by near-complete abstinence until late adolescence, another (27.2%) by earlier initiation of alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis, and another (7.2%) by early initiation of these substances and later initiation of more hazardous drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine. Although childhood externalizing symptoms increased the risk of being in the second or third class, internalizing symptoms decreased risk when rural and non-rural adolescents were considered together. Few effects of rurality were found, but the negative relationship between internalizing at age 10 and high-risk substance use was only observed among non-rural adolescents. This finding, which was inconsistent with our initial predictions that rurality might confer higher risk for substance use, instead suggests a potentially protective effect of internalizing symptoms for engagement in risky substance use which may differ based on an adolescent’s geographical context.

Integrating Objective and Subjective Social Class to Advance Our Understanding of Externalizing Problem Behavior in Children and Adolescents: A Conceptual Review and Model

Extant research has identified both objective measures of socioeconomic status (SES) and subjective social class (SSC) as important predictors of psychosocial outcomes in childhood and adolescence, particularly with regard to externalizing symptoms. Given the importance of the associations with SES and SSC, a more nuanced and integrated conceptual understanding of early pathways of vulnerability implicated in the development and maintenance of youth externalizing problems is warranted. Thus, this review will: (1) operationalize both SES and SSC and their current standards of measurement; (2) examine current literature describing their respective associations with a range of externalizing symptoms in both children and adolescents; (3) review current theoretical models connecting SES and SSC and youth development and the strengths and limitations of those approaches; (4) propose a new conceptual socioecological model situating the impact of SES and SSC on youth externalizing problems in the context of parents and peers as a framework to further integrate existing research and guide future work; and (5) discuss potential clinical implications at the intersection of this work.

Longitudinal Associations between Social Relationships and Alcohol Use from Adolescence into Young Adulthood: The Role of Religiousness

As adolescence is a time characterized by rapid changes in social relationships as well as an increase in risk-taking behaviors, this prospective longitudinal study examined whether social involvement and social alienation are associated with changes in alcohol use from adolescence into young adulthood moderated by organizational and personal religiousness. Participants were 167 adolescents (53% male) assessed five times between ages 14 and 18 years old. Latent change score modeling analyses indicated that social alienation was positively associated with greater increases in alcohol use among those with low organizational religiousness and those with low personal religiousness in early adolescence and during the transition into young adulthood. The findings demonstrate the detrimental effects of social relationship risk factors that promote alcohol use during adolescence into young adulthood. The results further highlight the protective roles of organizational and personal religiousness acting as additional sources of social engagement experiences to modulate the effects of social alienation predicting alcohol use progression and provide evidence for the positive impact religiousness has on healthy adolescent development.

The Role of Social Position Within Peer Groups in Distress-Motivated Smoking Among Adolescents

OBJECTIVE

The relationship between smoking and adolescents' peer relationships is complex, with studies showing increased risk of smoking for adolescents of both very high and very low social position. A key question is whether the impact of social position on smoking depends on an adolescent's level of coping motives (i.e., their desire to use smoking to mitigate negative affect).

METHOD

We assessed how social position predicts nicotine dependence in a longitudinal sample (N = 3,717; 44.8% male; mean age = 13.41 years) of adolescent lifetime smokers measured between 6th and 12th grades. Using both social network analysis and multilevel modeling, we assessed this question at the between-person and within-person level, hypothesizing that within-person decreases in social position would lead to increased risk of nicotine dependence among those with high levels of coping motives.

RESULTS

In contrast to our hypotheses, only interactions with the between-person measures of social position were found, with a slight negative relationship at low levels of coping motives. In addition, the main effect of coping motives was considerably stronger than that of social position at the between-person level, and social position had no significant within-person main effect on nicotine dependence risk.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that adolescents with higher overall levels of social position among their peers may have slightly decreased risk for nicotine dependence, but only when coping motives are low. Counter to expectations, higher levels of nicotine dependence risk were not linked to fluctuations in social position.

Social Information Processing in Substance Use Disorders: Insights From an Emotional Go-Nogo Task

Positive social connections are crucial for recovery from Substance Use Disorder (SUD). Of interest is understanding potential social information processing (SIP) mediators of this effect. To explore whether persons with different SUD show idiosyncratic biases toward social signals, we administered an emotional go-nogo task (EGNG) to 31 individuals with Cocaine Use Disorder (CoUD), 31 with Cannabis Use Disorder (CaUD), 79 with Opioid Use Disorder (OUD), and 58 controls. Participants were instructed to respond to emotional faces (Fear/Happy) but withhold responses to expressionless faces in two task blocks, with the reverse instruction in the other two blocks. Emotional faces as non-targets elicited more "false alarm" (FA) commission errors as a main effect. Groups did not differ in overall rates of hits (correct responses to target faces), but participants with CaUD and CoUD showed reduced rates of hits (relative to controls) when expressionless faces were targets. OUD participants had worse hit rates [and slower reaction times (RT)] when fearful faces (but not happy faces) were targets. CaUD participants were most affected by instruction effects (respond/"go" vs withhold response/"no-go" to emotional face) on discriminability statistic A. Participants were faster to respond to happy face targets than to expressionless faces. However, this pattern was reversed in fearful face blocks in OUD and CoUD participants. This experiment replicated previous findings of the greater salience of expressive face images, and extends this finding to SUD, where persons with CaUD may show even greater bias toward emotional faces. Conversely, OUD participants showed idiosyncratic behavior in response to fearful faces suggestive of increased attentional disruption by fear. These data suggest a mechanism by which positive social signals may contribute to recovery.

Substance use treatment in Appalachian Tennessee amid COVID-19: Challenges and preparing for the future

The COVID-19 pandemic created a number of rapidly emerging and unprecedented challenges for those engaged in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, forcing service providers to improvise their treatment strategies as the crisis deepened. Drawing from five ongoing federally funded SUD projects in Appalachian Tennessee and hundreds of hours of meetings and interviews, this article explores the pandemic's impact on an already structurally disadvantaged region, its recovery community, and those who serve it. More specifically, we note detrimental effects of increased isolation since the implementation of COVID-19 safety measures, including stakeholders' reports of higher incidences of relapse, overdose, and deaths in the SUD population. Treatment providers have responded with telehealth services, but faced barriers in technology access and computer literacy among clients. Providers have also had to restrict new clients to accommodate social distancing, faced delays in health screening those they can accept, and denied family visitations, which has affected retention. In light of these challenges, several promising lessons for the future emerged--such as preparing for an influx of new and returning clients in need of SUD treatment; making arrangements for long-term housing and facility modification; developing a hybrid care delivery model, taking advantage of new regulations enabling telemedicine; budgeting for and storing personal protective equipment (PPE) and related supplies; and developing disaster protocols to withstand threats to intake, retention, and financial solvency.

Neurobiological Bases of Social Networks

A social network is a web that integrates multiple levels of interindividual social relationships and has direct associations with an individual’s health and well-being. Previous research has mainly focused on how brain and social network structures (structural properties) act on each other and on how the brain supports the spread of ideas and behaviors within social networks (functional properties). The structure of the social network is correlated with activity in the amygdala, which links decoding and interpreting social signals and social values. The structure also relies on the mentalizing network, which is central to an individual’s ability to infer the mental states of others. Network functional properties depend on multilayer brain-social networks, indicating that information transmission is supported by the default mode system, the valuation system, and the mentalizing system. From the perspective of neuroendocrinology, overwhelming evidence shows that variations in oxytocin, β-endorphin and dopamine receptor genes, including oxytocin receptor (OXTR), mu opioid receptor 1 (OPRM1) and dopamine receptor 2 (DRD2), predict an individual’s social network structure, whereas oxytocin also contributes to improved transmission of emotional and behavioral information from person to person. Overall, previous studies have comprehensively revealed the effects of the brain, endocrine system, and genes on social networks. Future studies are required to determine the effects of cognitive abilities, such as memory, on social networks, the characteristics and neural mechanism of social networks in mental illness and how social networks change over time through the use of longitudinal methods.

Examining the internalizing pathway to substance use frequency in 10 cultural groups

Use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs (i.e., substance use) is a leading cause of global health burden for 10-to-24-year-olds, according to the World Health Organization's index of number of years of life lost, leading international health organizations to prioritize the prevention of substance use before it escalates in adolescence. Pathways defined by childhood externalizing symptoms and internalizing symptoms identify precursors to frequent substance use toward which interventions can be directed. However, these pathways are rarely examined beyond the United States and Europe. We investigated these pathways in our sample of 1083 children from 10 cultural groups followed from ages 8-14. We found that age-10 externalizing symptoms predicted more frequent mother-reported age-13 and self-reported age-14 substance use. We also found that a depressive pathway, marked by behavioral inhibition at age 8 and subsequent elevation in depressive symptoms across ages 8-12 predicted more frequent substance use at age 13 and 14. Additionally, we found a combined externalizing and internalizing pathway, wherein elevated age-9 depressive symptoms predicted elevated externalizing symptoms at age-10 which predicted greater peer support for use at age-12, which led to more frequent substance use at age-13 and -14. These pathways remained significant within the cultural groups we studied, even after controlling for differences in substance use frequency across groups. Additionally, cultures with greater opportunities for substance use at age-12 had more frequent adolescent substance use at age-13. These findings highlight the importance of disaggregating between- and within-culture effects in identifying the etiology of early adolescent substance use.