The Protective Role of Perceived Control on Associations Between Job Loss, Financial Difficulties, and Substance Use Among Young Adults Early in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Abstract

Adverse life events that threaten normative transitions are associated with increased alcohol and cannabis use among young adults. However, few studies have tested the extent to which specific negative events impact substance use behaviors nor identified relevant risk or protective factors (e.g., perceived control). During the COVID-19 pandemic, young adults experienced economic adversities (i.e., job loss and financial strain) at disproportionally high rates. This provided a unique opportunity to test associations between job loss/financial difficulties and substance use outcomes and whether perceived control in work and finance domains moderated these associations. Young adults completed self-report surveys at two time points-prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020) and in the acute phase of the pandemic (April/May 2020). Participants (N = 519; Mage = 25.4years; 62.8% female) were recruited in and around Seattle, WA, as part of an ongoing longitudinal cohort study. Pandemic-related job loss (18.9%) and financial difficulty (49.7%) were relatively common in this sample. Job loss was associated with increased number of drinks on the heaviest past-month drinking occasion (from January 2020 to April/May 2020). Financial difficulty was associated with increased drinking frequency and number of drinks on the heaviest drinking occasion. The effect of job loss and financial difficulty on alcohol and cannabis use was generally moderated by participants' perceived control of these domains. For those with low perceived control, job loss/financial difficulty was associated with increased alcohol/cannabis use, but for those high in perceived control, job loss/financial difficulty was associated with decreased alcohol use frequency. Findings give advance understanding of how economic adversities relate to young adults' alcohol and cannabis use. Notably, perceived control over these domains may be modifiable through prevention efforts aiming to foster self-efficacy among young people and policy to provide available agency to those in need.