Beskrivelse
Background: Adolescent drinking can have serious and harmful consequences. However, in many nations, and particularly in Europe where the legal drinking age is low (e.g., 16 years), there is a high frequency of drinking among high school students. To this end, drinking is sufficiently common to appear "typical" among many high school students and their families. This is particularly true in Denmark, where hazardous alcohol use is widespread for youth and to a large extent legal (e.g., the legal drinking age is 16 and alcohol is routinely sold at high school parties). In turn, Danish youth have some of the highest levels of youth heavy episodic drinking in Europe, and most parents of Danish youth view youth drinking as expected and developmentally appropriate. At the same time, parent behaviors including parent monitoring, emotional support and attitudes towards their adolescent’s drinking have been linked to reduced adolescent drinking. We evaluated this same dynamic among contemporary high school students in Denmark.Methods: An online survey was administered to a sample of first-year students from 16 public high schools in Denmark (N=3001), assessing their perceptions of parent monitoring, parent support, time spent with parents, and perceived parent approval or disapproval of youths’ alcohol use. We evaluated past month self-reported drinking (yes/no) and number of days getting drunk (heavy episodic drinking; HED). To examine potential associations, we used logistic and linear regression models adjusted for age and sex.
Results: In this sample (age mean 17 years, range 15-19 years; 65% females) 78% of youth reported past month drinking and 62% reported HED in the past month. Perceived high parental monitoring was negatively associated with past month drinking (-0.4; p<0.001) and HED (-0.9; p<0.001); and, perceived high parental support was negatively associated with HED (-0.1; p<0.001). Further, students spending more time with parents were more likely to report no drinking (-0.2; p<0.001) and lower frequency of HED days (-0.3; p<0.001). Finally, students who perceived their parents as permissive on HED had greater rates of past month drinking (3.5; p<0.001) and HED (1.2; p=0.001).
Conclusions: These findings are highly relevant – and are particularly informative for more permissive alcohol cultural and legal regions with young ages of initiation. These data support that parent behavior, even in heavy drinking cultures, play an important role. Our findings have implications for prevention and intervention programs by stressing the importance of addressing parental influence in these efforts e.g., by involving parents in school-based interventions. Further research is warranted to translate these data into real-world implications for impactful programs that enhance parental support and reduce the incidence of harmful alcohol use among adolescents.
| Periode | 23 nov. 2024 |
|---|---|
| Begivenhedstitel | Lisbon Addictions: The 2024 European Conference on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies |
| Begivenhedstype | Konference |
| Placering | Lissabon, PortugalVis på kort |
| Grad af anerkendelse | International |