Paths to Adolescent Drug & Mental Health Problems

Ensminger, Margaret

Abstract

The proposal is concerned with examining risk factors early in the life cycle that lead to alcohol and drug abuse and mental health (ADM) disorders among adolescents. The function of risk factors along their developmental paths leading to these outcomes and the potential for preventive intervention will be determined. For the past 20 years data have been collected on children and adolescents in Woodlawn, a poor, urban, black community on Chicago's South side. A number of risk factors have been identified beginning as far back as first grade for heavy alcohol, drug and cigarette use, delinquency, and psychological distress during adolescence. The next step is to find factors that mediate between these antecedents and the later outcomes and to learn how they as well as the outcomes interact with each other. Knowing how these risk factors evolve will be important in identifying targets for prevention and critical points in the child's life for intervention. This prospective, longitudinal, community epidemiologic study specifically has the following objectives: To examine the continunities between early risk factors, evolving family, school, psychological, and individual conditions and teenage outcomes. The predisposing, enhancing, inhibiting or mediating circumstances are the foci of this research. To identify the antecedents and evolving paths leading to one adolescent outcome with those leading to others. Specifically, the outcomes will include adolescent alcohol and drug use, psychiatric symptoms, self-esteem and delinquency. To explore how individuals with multiple ADM disorders differ in terms of the antecedents and mediating factors from those individuals with a single disorder, e.g., how do adolescents who are both delinquent and psychologically distressed differ from those who are only delinquent or only distressed. To propose intervention strategies suggested by the results of these analyses. These proposals will identify target subgroups, critical times for interventions and social fields in which to intervene.