Low stress resilience in late adolescence and risk of smoking, high alcohol consumption and drug use later in life

Abstract

BackgroundWhile compromised stress resilience constitutes a recognised risk factor for somatic and psychiatric disease development in general, the knowledge about how individual variation in vulnerability to stress may specifically influence the long-term risks of disadvantageous health behaviours is limited.MethodsIn this Swedish cohort study, we aimed to investigate the association between stress resilience in late adolescence and adult use of addictive substances. We included 9381 men with information on psychological stress resilience measured during military conscription examinations, who later responded to an extensive health survey (mean age 34.0±7.2 years) including detailed information on substance use. We modelled continuous outcomes using linear regression, binary outcomes with logistic regression and other categorical outcomes with multinomial logistic regression.ResultsWe found that low stress resilience in adolescence conferred increased risks of all studied measures of addictive behaviour. After adjusting for childhood socioeconomic information, low stress resilience was associated with adult current regular smoking (relative risk ratio: 5.85, 95% CI 4.32 to 7.93), higher nicotine dependence scores (beta: 0.76, 95% CI 0.29 to 1.23), hazardous use of alcohol (>14 alcoholic drink-equivalents per week, OR: 1.72, 95% CI 1.37 to 2.16), DSM-IV criteria for alcohol dependence (OR: 1.74, 95% CI 1.35 to 2.25), and drug use (OR: 1.77, 95% CI 1.51 to 2.08). The results remained largely unchanged after further adjustments for adult educational attainment and occupation as well as for additional conscription covariates.ConclusionLow stress resilience in late adolescence appears to be associated with an increased risk of disadvantageous and addictive health behaviours in adulthood.

The Relationship Between Tendency to Substance Abuse and Resilience and Academic Procrastination in Secondary School Students

“…These data suggest that the higher the students' resilience, the lower their tendency to abuse drugs. These results are consistent with those of Mohammadi, Aghajani et al [18], and Kennedy, Chen, Fang, and associates [19].…”

Smoking and stress in the general population in Denmark

“…A large cohort study followed children for 16 years and found that girls with high stress at age three had over two times higher odds than girls with low stress to start smoking early 16 . Another large cohort study showed that low stress resilience in late adolescence increased the risk of smoking in adulthood 17 . A population-based cross-sectional study, measuring stress with the same tool as our study, found that a one-unit increase in perceived stress was associated with in a significant 5% increased odds of smoking 18 .…”

Stress resilience in young men mediates the effect of childhood trauma on their offspring's birth weight – An analysis of 250,000 families

“…Men who lost their parents were slightly less likely to get a long education (not shown). It is possible that they were more often smokers as well (Kennedy et al, 2019). We considered the possibility that they also tended to partner women with a lower education which, in turn, could correlate with health behaviours (smoking in pregnancy being the factor with the strongest potential to affect next generation's birth weight).…”