Modelling possible causality in the associations between unemployment, cannabis use, and alcohol misuse
Autor: | L. John Horwood, Carolina Villamil Grest, Geraldine F. H. McLeod, Joseph M. Boden, Jungeun Olivia Lee |
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Rok vydání: | 2016 |
Předmět: |
Adult
Male medicine.medical_specialty Longitudinal study Health (social science) Adolescent Alcohol Drinking Substance-Related Disorders media_common.quotation_subject Alcohol use disorder Peer Group Cohort Studies 03 medical and health sciences Young Adult 0302 clinical medicine History and Philosophy of Science Risk Factors medicine Humans 030212 general & internal medicine Longitudinal Studies Causation Psychiatry Cannabis Dependence media_common Cannabis biology Regression analysis medicine.disease biology.organism_classification Causality 030227 psychiatry Unemployment Female Psychology Alcohol-Related Disorders |
Zdroj: | Social sciencemedicine (1982). 175 |
ISSN: | 1873-5347 |
Popis: | There has been considerable interest in the extent to which substance use and unemployment may be related, particularly the causal pathways that may be involved in these associations. It has been argued that these associations may reflect social causation, in which unemployment influences substance use, or that they may reflect social selection, in which substance use increases the risk of becoming and remaining unemployed. The present study sought to test these competing explanations.Data from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, featuring a longitudinal birth cohort, were used to model the associations between unemployment and both cannabis and alcohol. Data on patterns of unemployment, involvement with cannabis, and symptoms of alcohol use disorder were examined from ages 18-35 years. The associations between unemployment and both cannabis dependence and alcohol use disorder (AUD) were modelled using conditional fixed-effects regression models, augmented by time-dynamic covariate factors.The analyses showed evidence of possible reciprocal causal processes in the association between unemployment and cannabis dependence, in which unemployment of at least three months' duration significantly (p 0.0001) increased the risk of cannabis dependence, and cannabis dependence significantly (p 0.0001) increased the risk of being unemployed. Similar evidence was found for the associations between unemployment and AUD, although these associations were smaller in magnitude.The present findings support both social causation and social selection arguments, by indicating that unemployment plays a causal role in substance misuse, and that it is also likely that a reverse causal process whereby substance misuse increases the risk of unemployment. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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