Post-traumatic growth, stressful life events, and relationships with substance use behaviors among alternative high school students: A prospective study

Abstract

A highly stressful life event (SLE) can elicit positive psychosocial growth, referred to as post-traumatic growth (PTG) among youth. We examined PTG and the number of SLEs for their influence on substance use behaviours among a sample of older, diverse alternative high school students participating in a drug prevention programme (n = 564; mean age = 16.8; 49% female; 65% Hispanic). Surveys assessed PTG, SLEs and substance use behaviours at the two-year follow-up. Multilevel regression models were run to examine the effect of PTG and the number of SLEs on frequency of substance use at the two-year follow-up, controlling for baseline substance use, sociodemographic variables, peer substance use, attrition propensity and treatment group. Greater PTG scores were associated with lower frequencies of alcohol use, getting drunk on alcohol, binge drinking, marijuana use and less substance abuse at the two-year follow-up, but not associated with cigarette or hard drug use. Also, PTG did not moderate the relationship between cumulative number of SLEs and substance use behaviours, rather PTG appears to be protective against negative effects of a single, life-altering SLE. Fostering PTG from a particularly poignant SLE may be useful for prevention programmes targeting alcohol, marijuana and substance abuse behaviours among high-risk youth.

Keywords:

• posttraumatic growth
• high-risk
• older youth
• substance use
• stressful life events

Notes

1. An event qualifies as a traumatic stressor if it (a) involved an actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of oneself or to others and (b) if the individual's response involved intense fear, helplessness or horror (APA 2000).

Additional information

Funding

Funding. This work was supported by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program [20DT-0041] and the National Institute on Aging, of the National Institutes of Health [F32AG048681].