Search

The interrelationships of depression and suicide with adolescent drug use, delinquency, eating disorders, and the risk factors for these different problems were investigated among 597 9th and 11th graders in an urban high school. There is a strong association of drug use with suicidal ideation among girls, and a stronger relationship with attempts among girls and boys. Suicidal youths are ill-adjusted and display a lack of attachment and commitment to family and school. Causal models indicate that poor interpersonal interactions with parents, absence of peer interactions, and life events lead to depression, which in turn leads to suicidal ideation. Depressive symptoms are the strongest predictors of suicidal ideation. Among females, depression predicts drug involvement, and in turn, drug use increases suicidal ideation. Drug use is only one class of problem behaviors that constitutes a risk factor for suicidal behavior in adolescence. Delinquency and eating disorders also have direct effects on suicidal ideation beyond those of depressive affect. As for drug involvement, these problem behaviors are more predictive of suicidal behavior among girls than boys. Similarity and specificity of the predictors for problem behaviors within and between the sexes are discussed. Although young women use drugs to handle feelings of depression, drug use appears ineffective in the long run in relieving these depressive feelings. Understanding the dynamics of suicidal ideation in adolescence has important public health implications, since ideation is a strong predictor of attempts, especially among females.

The correlates of alcohol use by adolescents are compared in three cultures with different prevalences of alcohol use: France, with high prevalence; Israel, with low prevalence; and the United States, in the middle. In all three countries, significant others, parents and peers, are more powerful predictors of alcohol use than are the adolescent's personal attributes, such as attitudes, behaviors, and demographic characteristics. Cross-cultural differences appear in the relative importance of parents and peers and in the structure of influence of parents and peers as role models. Parents are more important role models in Israel than in the other two cultures, while peers are more important in the United States than in France or in Israel.

The social psychological antecedents of entry into three sequential stages of adolescent drug use, hard liquor, marihuana, and other illicit drugs, are examined in a cohort of high school students in which the population at risk for initiation into each stage could be clearly specified. The analyses are based on a two-wave panel sample of New York State public secondary students and subsamples of matched adolescent-parent and adolescent-best schoolfriend dyads. Each of four clusters of predictor variables, parental influences, peer influences, adolescent involvement in various behaviors, and adolescent beliefs and values, and single predictors within each cluster assume differential importance for each stage of drug behavior. Prior involvement in a variety of activities, such as minor delinquency and use of cigarettes, beer, and wine are most important for hard liquor use. Adolescents' beliefs and values favorable to the use of marihuana and association with marihuana-using peers are the strongest predictors of initiation into marihuana. Poor relations with parents, feelings of depression, and exposure to drug-using peers are most important for initiation into illicit drugs other than marihuana.