Adolescent substance use disorders: findings from a 14-year follow-up of speech/language-impaired and control children.
Intervening on the development of adolescent addiction requires an understanding of the role of precursors. In a community sample of youth with and without early childhood speech/language (S/L) impairments, 12.7% of participants had a substance use disorder (SUD). Among these participants, 42.0% met criteria for more than 1 SUD. Interestingly, rates of SUDs did not differ by S/L status. However, S/L-impaired participants did show greater psychiatric comorbidity and poorer functioning. A total of 80% of S/L participants with SUDs had a concurrent diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, compared with 43.8% of SUDs controls. In a logistic regression analysis, we found age 5 mother-rated problem behavior scores and an interaction between S/L status and teacher-rated conduct problem scores were predictive of SUDs. High conduct scores were predictive of SUDs development among control participants but not among S/L-impaired participants. First substance use and initial SUDs symptoms suggest that a window of opportunity exists to reach these troubled young people before they spiral into addiction.
Beitchman
J H
JH
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. beitchmanj@cs.clarke-inst.on.ca
Douglas
L
L
Wilson
B
B
Johnson
C
C
Young
A
A
Atkinson
L
L
Escobar
M
M
Taback
N
N
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D010554:Personality Disorders; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology