Abstract
Adolescent depression is associated with many negative outcomes, including elevated marijuana use. Although parental influences on adolescent depressive symptoms and marijuana use have been examined independently, their interrelation remains understudied. The current research investigates the hypothesis that lower levels of parental monitoring and warmth are inversely associated with adolescent depressive symptoms and marijuana use. A path analytic approach (N = 12,115) on data from a representative US sample indicated depressive symptoms had an indirect effect on the relationship between parental warmth (p < .001), monitoring (p = .013), and adolescent marijuana use. Exploring relationships grouped by respondents’ age (12–14 and 15–17 years, respectively) revealed minor differences. Depressive symptoms had significant indirect effects on parental warmth and marijuana use (both p < .001) and on parental monitoring and marijuana use (both p < .05). Parental influences appear to play an important role in marijuana use among adolescents with depressive symptoms.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Brandon Nakawaki for his expert statistical consultation at various points in the research.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Grant R01-DA032698. NIDA had no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.
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Data for the 2014 NSDUH was collected by is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. This research project underwent IRB approval from the RTI International’s Institutional Review Board.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.
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Ruybal, A.L., Crano, W.D. Parental Influences on Adolescent Major Depressive Symptoms and Marijuana Use. Int J Ment Health Addiction 18, 382–394 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-019-00194-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-019-00194-y