Abstract
ObjectiveAs impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to unfold, research is needed to understand how school-aged youth are coping with COVID-19-related changes and disruptions to daily life. Among a sample of Canadian youth, our objective was to examine the mental health factors associated with using substances to cope with COVID-19-related changes, taking account of expected sex differences. MethodsWe used online data collected from 7150 students in the COMPASS study, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic (May–July 2020) in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, Canada. We specified a sex-stratified, generalized linear mixed model to estimate the likelihood of engagement in substance-related coping behaviours, while testing for the effects of students’ mental health, individual characteristics, and school neighborhood characteristics. ResultsTwelve percent of students (13.4% of females, 9.9% of males) in our sample reported using cannabis, alcohol, cigarettes, and/or vaping to help cope with COVID-19-related changes. Regardless of sex, students with greater depressive symptoms were more likely to engage in substance-related coping (aORFemale = 1.04, 95 %CI[1.01–1.07]; aORMale = 1.06, 95 %CI[1.013–1.11]). Among females, better psychosocial wellbeing was protective against engagement in substance related-coping (aOR = 0.96, 95 %CI[0.94–0.98]), controlling for current substance use. ConclusionsCanadian school-aged youth with generally poor mental health may be more likely to have engaged in substance use to help cope with COVID-19-related changes during the first wave of the pandemic, and female youth may be at disproportionate risk of engaging in the behaviour. Ongoing evaluation of the impacts of COVID-19 on youth health is required.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of school-aged youth across Canada and globally
We reported the prevalence of current substance use and compared it with the prevalence at which students used each to cope with COVID-19-related changes
12% (n = 863) of students in our sample reported engaging in any substance use to help cope with COVID-19-related changes be tween May and July 2020, including 13% (n = 602) of female students and 10% (n = 261) of male students (χ2 = 21.3, p < 0.0001; Table 1)
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of school-aged youth across Canada and globally. Since March 12th, 2020, provincial governments have enacted emergency lockdown protocols resulting for most adolescents in shifts to remote learning, cancellation of extracurricular activities, and closure of recreation- and leisure-based facil ities. These measures were taken to help curb community spread and transmission of the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the effec tiveness of school closures on transmission control remains unclear (Viner et al, 2020). Scale traumatic events, disasters, or war (Bridgland et al, 2021) Such adverse collective experiences are usually accompanied by populationlevel increases in mental disorder symptoms (e.g., post-traumatic stress, depression) as well as problematic substance use (Galea et al, 2020; Lee et al, 2007; Neria et al, 2008; Vlahov et al, 2004). In the presence of excess psychosocial stress, a substantial deficit in one’s healthy coping skills may lead to the development of more maladaptive coping be haviours such as substance use (Britton, 2004)
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