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E-Cigarette Use Is Associated with Increased Psychological Distress among Youth: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of State-Level Data from 2019 and 2021

A crisis of worsening youth mental health in recent years across the United States has created alarm among health professionals. As a result, health professionals have sought to improve methods of identifying youth in need of treatment services. Cigarette, cannabis, and alcohol use each consistently...

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Autor principal: Cambron, Christopher
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9516976/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36142001
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811726
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author Cambron, Christopher
author_facet Cambron, Christopher
author_sort Cambron, Christopher
collection PubMed
description A crisis of worsening youth mental health in recent years across the United States has created alarm among health professionals. As a result, health professionals have sought to improve methods of identifying youth in need of treatment services. Cigarette, cannabis, and alcohol use each consistently serve as behavioral markers of risk for youth mental health problems. Despite the recent growth of electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use among youth, few studies have examined whether e-cigarettes follow the same associational pattern with mental health problems in the context of other substance use. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic may have altered the associations between youth substance use and mental health problems due to both reduced overall use and increased mental health problems after the onset of the pandemic. The current study examined associations between youth substance use and psychological distress before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic using two state-representative samples of youth in grades 8, 10, and 12 from 2019 (N = 58,689) and 2021 (N = 46,823) from Utah. Pooled cross-sectional linear and negative binomial regression models clustered by grade, stratified by school district, and weighted to represent population characteristics estimated associations between recent e-cigarette, combustible cigarette, cannabis, and heavy alcohol use and two measures of psychological distress—depressive symptoms and mental health treatment needs. After controlling for sociodemographic factors and recent uses of other substances, results indicated that psychological distress increased from 2019 to 2021 and that recent e-cigarette, combustible cigarette, cannabis, and heavy alcohol use were each significantly associated with increased levels on both measures of psychological distress. Compared to other substances, e-cigarette use showed the strongest standardized associations. The association of e-cigarette use with depressive symptoms strengthened significantly from 2019 to 2021. Given the youth mental health crisis paired with the widespread adoption of e-cigarettes, health professionals should consider recent e-cigarette use an increasingly important behavioral marker for risks of mental health problems among youth. Results suggest that future research studies examining the temporal ordering of substance use and mental health among youth should include e-cigarettes.
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spelling pubmed-95169762022-09-29 E-Cigarette Use Is Associated with Increased Psychological Distress among Youth: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of State-Level Data from 2019 and 2021 Cambron, Christopher Int J Environ Res Public Health Article A crisis of worsening youth mental health in recent years across the United States has created alarm among health professionals. As a result, health professionals have sought to improve methods of identifying youth in need of treatment services. Cigarette, cannabis, and alcohol use each consistently serve as behavioral markers of risk for youth mental health problems. Despite the recent growth of electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use among youth, few studies have examined whether e-cigarettes follow the same associational pattern with mental health problems in the context of other substance use. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic may have altered the associations between youth substance use and mental health problems due to both reduced overall use and increased mental health problems after the onset of the pandemic. The current study examined associations between youth substance use and psychological distress before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic using two state-representative samples of youth in grades 8, 10, and 12 from 2019 (N = 58,689) and 2021 (N = 46,823) from Utah. Pooled cross-sectional linear and negative binomial regression models clustered by grade, stratified by school district, and weighted to represent population characteristics estimated associations between recent e-cigarette, combustible cigarette, cannabis, and heavy alcohol use and two measures of psychological distress—depressive symptoms and mental health treatment needs. After controlling for sociodemographic factors and recent uses of other substances, results indicated that psychological distress increased from 2019 to 2021 and that recent e-cigarette, combustible cigarette, cannabis, and heavy alcohol use were each significantly associated with increased levels on both measures of psychological distress. Compared to other substances, e-cigarette use showed the strongest standardized associations. The association of e-cigarette use with depressive symptoms strengthened significantly from 2019 to 2021. Given the youth mental health crisis paired with the widespread adoption of e-cigarettes, health professionals should consider recent e-cigarette use an increasingly important behavioral marker for risks of mental health problems among youth. Results suggest that future research studies examining the temporal ordering of substance use and mental health among youth should include e-cigarettes. MDPI 2022-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9516976/ /pubmed/36142001 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811726 Text en © 2022 by the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Cambron, Christopher
E-Cigarette Use Is Associated with Increased Psychological Distress among Youth: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of State-Level Data from 2019 and 2021
title E-Cigarette Use Is Associated with Increased Psychological Distress among Youth: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of State-Level Data from 2019 and 2021
title_full E-Cigarette Use Is Associated with Increased Psychological Distress among Youth: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of State-Level Data from 2019 and 2021
title_fullStr E-Cigarette Use Is Associated with Increased Psychological Distress among Youth: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of State-Level Data from 2019 and 2021
title_full_unstemmed E-Cigarette Use Is Associated with Increased Psychological Distress among Youth: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of State-Level Data from 2019 and 2021
title_short E-Cigarette Use Is Associated with Increased Psychological Distress among Youth: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis of State-Level Data from 2019 and 2021
title_sort e-cigarette use is associated with increased psychological distress among youth: a pooled cross-sectional analysis of state-level data from 2019 and 2021
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9516976/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36142001
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811726
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