Role of mutual attachment in drug use: a longitudinal study.
OBJECTIVE
This study examines childhood aggression, mutual attachment and later drug use.


METHODS
Data on 397 children and adolescents at three points in time were collected and analyzed. Mothers and their children were individually interviewed.


RESULTS
A weak parent-child mutual attachment in girls can be viewed as a consequence of childhood aggression. Moreover, mutual parent-child attachment affects later drug use through three stabilities: (1) the stability of attachment during adolescence, (2) the stability of unconventionality during adolescence, and (3) the stability of drug use during adolescence.


CONCLUSIONS
The multiple pathway perspective on drug use poses a number of ways in which to think about interventional approaches. First, interventions may be targeted toward those risk factors showing the strongest relations with later drug use. A second mode of orientation to intervention would deal with the amenability of the target to particular interventional agents. Interventions may be geared to intraindividual characteristics or may focus more attention on familial characteristics. A third way of considering interventions, as suggested by the developmental pathways to drug use, seeks to address the temporal order of risk factors leading to drug use.
Brook
J S
JS
Department of Psychiatry, New York Medical College, Valhalla 10595.
Whiteman
M
M
Finch
S
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009518:New York; D009769:Object Attachment; D010553:Personality Development; D012951:Socialization; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology*