Adolescent Behavioral Health: Implications from Prescription Drug Abuse, Teenage Fertility & Smoking Behavior
This session brings together new research on three important adolescent health-behavior issues – prescription drug abuse, teen fertility and smoking. The Ali, Dean and Lipari paper examines the impact of nonmedical use of prescription drugs on mental health outcomes among adolescents. Although prescription opioids are effective treatment for chronic/acute pain, its nonmedical use has increased dramatically among adolescents, especially given that opioids have been found to selectively bind to neuroreceptors that modulate mood. Using propensity score matching the paper documents a positive association between nonmedical use of prescription opioids and major depressive episodes. The Kapinos and Yakusheva paper explores the extent to which peer effects in teenage fertility vary by race/ethnicity and how that may explain the documented racial disparities in teen pregnancy. Using friends’ miscarriages as a natural experimental the paper finds that a friend’s childbirth reduces the probability of teen childbirth for both blacks and whites. However, the mechanism through which this reduction is achieved appears to be different – for whites it is primarily through an increase in abortion whereas for blacks it is primarily through a reduction in the probability of pregnancy. The Nikaj paper examines the association between teacher smoking at school and student smoking. Although a growing literature has estimated the impact of social influences on smoking, few studies have examined the effect that school-level curricula and tobacco control policies exert on youth smoking, especially in low/middle income countries. The paper provides evidence to show positive effect of teachers’ smoking on student smoking behavior.