Substance-related coping behaviours among youth during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic

Isabella Romano; Karen A Patte; Margaret de Groh; Ying Jiang; Terrance J Wade; Richard E Bélanger; Scott T Leatherdale

doi:10.1016/j.abrep.2021.100392

Substance-related coping behaviours among youth during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic

Addict Behav Rep. 2021 Dec:14:100392. doi: 10.1016/j.abrep.2021.100392. Epub 2021 Nov 3.

Authors

Isabella Romano^{1

2}, Karen A Patte³, Margaret de Groh², Ying Jiang², Terrance J Wade³, Richard E Bélanger^{4

5}, Scott T Leatherdale¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
² Applied Research Division, Public Health Agency of Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
³ Department of Health Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada.
⁴ VITAM - Centre de recherche en santé durable de l'Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada.
⁵ Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval, Québec, QC, Canada.

Abstract

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 (aOR_Female = 1.04, 95 %CI[1.01-1.07]; aOR_Male = 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.

Keywords: Adolescent health; COVID-19 pandemic; Coping behaviour; Mental health; Substance use.