Alcohol, Drug Use A Greater Risk for Children of Deployed Parents

A new University of Iowa study suggests that military deployment of a parent puts children at an increased risk for drinking alcohol and using drugs. 

Using data from a statewide survey of sixth, eighth, and 11th-grade students in Iowa, the researchers found an increase in 30-day alcohol use, binge drinking, using marijuana and other illegal drugs, and misusing prescription drugs among children of deployed or recently returned military parents compared to children in nonmilitary families. The increased risk was consistent across all age groups. The findings are published online in the journal Addiction. 

"We worry a lot about the service men and women and we sometimes forget that they are not the only ones put into harm's way by deployment - their families are affected, too," says Stephan Arndt, Ph.D., UI professor of psychiatry in biostatistics and senior study author. "Our findings suggest we need to provide these families with more community support." 

In 2010, almost 2 million American children had at least one parent in active military duty, according to the Department of Defense. 

A second unexpected finding was the relationship between parental deployment, disruption of children's living arrangements, and increased risk of substance use. 

"When at least one parent is deployed, there are a measurable percentage of children who are not living with their natural parents," Arndt told Medical News Today. "Some of these children go to live with a relative, but some go outside of the family, and that change in these children's living arrangements grossly affected their risk of binge drinking and marijuana use." 

The study found that for children who were not living with a parent or relative, those with a deployed parent had a risk of binge drinking that was 42 percentage points higher than a student from a nonmilitary family. In comparison, children with a deployed parent who still were living with a parent had a risk of binge drinking that was about 8 percentage points higher than children of nonmilitary families who were living with a parent. 

Because the study surveyed only Iowa children, the nature of Iowa's military population may also affect the results, Arndt notes. In Iowa, along with Vermont, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, the largest portion of military personnel serve with the Reserve or the National Guard. These groups of military personnel live in civilian communities rather than on military bases and may have limited access to support services and resources designed to help military families. 

Although the study findings may be specific to families of National Guardsmen and women, Arndt said that the results agree with previous research that focused on risky behavior for children of deployed military men and women in Washington state, which unlike Iowa has a large active duty population. 

Does your coalition want to address substance abuse and quality of life issues with the veterans and their families in your community? The VetCorps project is being conducted by CADCA in partnership with the National Guard Bureau’s Prevention, Treatment and Outreach (PTO) Program with funding assistance from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). CADCA is recruiting AmeriCorps and VISTA members, and placing them in one of CADCA’s community coalitions located throughout the country to provide support to Veterans and Military Families (VMF) with a special emphasis on serving the needs of National Guard and Reserve VMF. 

Learn more about CADCA’s VetCorps project at http://www.cadca.org/VetCorps.

Two New Studies Conclude Marijuana Use Connected to College Failure

HealthDay reports that college students who use marijuana and other illegal substances, even occasionally, are more likely to leave school than students who don't dabble in drugs, new research finds. 

There's a strong link between marijuana use and "discontinuous enrollment," said study author Dr. Amelia Arria, director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. The same goes for other drugs, she added. 

In a recent issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Arria and her colleagues reported that students with high levels of marijuana use (more than 17 days a month) were twice as likely as those with minimal use (less than a day a month) to have an enrollment gap while in college. But even students who used pot less often, in the range of three to 12 days a month, were more likely to experience enrollment gaps. 

Arria told HealthDay that researchers wanted to look at whether or not drug use interferes with goals students had set for themselves. Their results show that marijuana use is not the benign substance many people believe it is. 

"The perceived risk of marijuana is declining because people think it's more benign than it is, and its use is going up among college students. But we've known for a long time that marijuana affects cognition and memory,” Arria said. 

For their research, the authors used data from the College Life Study, ongoing research on health-related behaviors among college students. They tracked 1,133 participants (47 percent male) over four years. All of the students began their freshman year between the ages of 17 and 19, and they all attended the same university located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. 

During each school year, they participated in questionnaires and interviews, even if they had decided not to return to classes at the university (a financial incentive was offered). Their enrollment and graduation data were obtained from university records that the students consented to share. 

"Continuous enrollment" was defined as being enrolled at the university for at least one credit during each fall and spring semester for the first four years of the study, Arria said. By the study's end, 71 percent of the students had remained continuously enrolled over four years, and 29 percent had not. 

Aria said it's key to point out that their results were independent of other factors such as demographics, high school GPA, fraternity or sorority enrollment, personality type, risk-taking behaviors, and a student's use of tobacco and alcohol. "Marijuana use was still a predictor of discontinuous enrollment," Arria said. 

A second study, published in the journal Psychiatric Services and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, looked at drug use and mental health problems and the risk of leaving college prematurely. Arria and her colleagues report that students who experience symptoms of depression and seek treatment for depression during college might be at risk for an enrollment gap, too, especially if they use pot or other illicit drugs.

Study Finds Marijuana and Alcohol Use Common among 10th Grade Students

A recent survey found high rates of regular alcohol and illicit and prescription drug use in tenth graders, reports a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Researchers used data from the NEXT Generation Health study, which surveyed 2,524 10th grade students in 80 schools and 9 U.S. school districts in the spring of 2010.

Twenty-six percent of the surveyed teens reported using marijuana, making it the most common illicit drug used in the previous 12-month period. Additionally, 35 percent of the teens had used alcohol, 27 percent had engaged in binge drinking and 19 percent had smoked cigarettes.

The study found that teens using multiple substances reported more physical ailments and symptoms of depression, anxiety or hopelessness and having difficulty sleeping. In addition, these adolescents reported more high-risk behaviors.

Dr. Kevin Conway, the study’s lead author from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said the study had several important findings.

“First, the results show that there are multiple types or subgroups of adolescent substance users who differ in terms of use patterns, somatic complaints, and depressive symptoms. Second, one subgroup tended to abuse multiple different substances including marijuana, alcohol, and medications. Third, this same group also reported the highest levels of somatic complaints and depressive symptoms. Together, these findings implicate polysubstance use as a broad indicator of severity deserving research and clinical attention,” he explained.

Conway, NIDA’s Deputy Director of the Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research, said that the high-risk profile of the polysubstance users indicates a need for mental health and substance use screening and referral.

“This indication is one of the most important and actionable findings of this study,” he told CADCA.

- See more at: http://www.cadca.org/resources/detail/study-finds-marijuana-and-alcohol-use-common-among-10th-grade-students#sthash.4hhTSe2g.dpuf

Study Finds Substance Abuse Rates Higher In Teenagers With ADHD

A new study published online in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry revealed a significantly higher prevalence of substance abuse and cigarette use by adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder histories than in those without ADHD. 

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC as well as six other health centers across the United States also found that, contrary to previous findings, current medications for ADHD do not counter the risk for substance abuse and substance use disorders among teenagers. 

This study is the first to examine teenage substance abuse and treatment for ADHD in a large multi-site sample. It also is the first to recognize that increased use of cigarettes in teenagers with ADHD histories commonly occurs with use of other substances such as alcohol and marijuana. 

Researchers studied 600 children over an eight-year period from childhood through adolescence to test the hypothesis that children with ADHD have increased risk of substance use and abuse or dependence in adolescence. Molina and colleagues also examined substance abuse patterns, the effects of ADHD medications over time, and the relationship between medication and substance use. 

The findings showed: 

• When the adolescents were an average of 15 years old, 35 percent of those with ADHD histories reported using one or more substances, as compared to only 20 percent of teens without ADHD histories. 

• Ten percent of the ADHD group met criteria for a substance abuse or dependence disorder, which means they experienced significant problems from their substance use, as compared to only 3 percent of the non-ADHD group. 

• When the adolescents were an average of 17 years old, marijuana was particularly problematic with 13 percent versus 7 percent of the ADHD and non-ADHD groups, respectively, having marijuana abuse or dependence.
 
• Daily cigarette smoking was very high at 17 percent of the ADHD group, a significantly higher rate than national estimates for this age. The smoking rate of non-ADHD teens was only 8 percent.
 
• Alcohol use was high in both groups, highlighting its common occurrence for teenagers in general.
 
• Substance abuse rates were not different for children who were still being treated with ADHD medication compared to children who were not. 

The authors noted the important finding that substance abuse rates were the same in teenagers still taking medication and in those no longer on medications, even after considering multiple factors that might cause teenage medication use. They noted that these results suggest a need to identify alternative approaches to substance abuse prevention and treatment for boys and girls with ADHD.

Teen Narrowly Escapes Death After Smoking Synthetic Marijuana

(CNN) -- Hospital staff removed Emily Bauer's breathing tube and stopped all medication and nourishment at 1:15 p.m. December 16. Only morphine flowed into her body, as the family waited by her side in her final moments.

But the next morning, she was still alive.

"Good morning, I love you," her mother told Emily as she approached the bed.

A hoarse voice whispered back, "I love you too."

Emily was back.

Her family said the drug that landed the Cypress, Texas, teenager, then 16, in the ICU two weeks earlier wasn't bought from a dealer or offered to her at a party. It was a form of synthetic weedpackaged as "potpourri" that she and friends bought at a gas station.

Best known by the street names "Spice" or "K2," fake weed is an herbal mixture sprayed with chemicals that's meant to create a high similar to smoking marijuana, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Advertised as a "legal" alternative to weed, it's often sold as incense or potpourri and in most states, it's anything but legal.

Synthetic marijuana was linked to 11,406 drug-related emergency department visits in 2010, according to a first-of-its-kind report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This is when it first started showing up on health providers' radar, as the Drug Abuse Warning Nework detected a measurable number of emergency visits.

Who wound up in the emergency room the most? Children ages 12 to 17.

The first state laws banning synthetic drugs popped up in 2010. Now at least 41 states -- including Texas, where Emily lives -- and Puerto Rico have banned them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Older legislation targeted specific versions of the drug, but the makers of Spice were a step ahead.

"These drug manufacturers slightly change the chemical compound, and it becomes a different substance that's not covered by the law," said NCSL policy specialist Alison Lawrence. "That's why in 2011 and 2012, we saw the states enacting these broader language bans."