Dissecting the Relationship Between Peer Victimization, Parental Abuse, and Substance Misuse Among Early Adolescents

• In Event: 2-202 - Modalities, Moderators, and Mechanisms of the Long-Term Links Between Peer Victimization and Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Victimization has been found to be a reliable antecedent to substance use and misuse, with studies showing that childhood trauma is common in the backgrounds of adult substance abusers (Dunn, Ryan, Paolo, & Van Fleet, 1995; Medrano, Zule, Hatch, & Desmond, 1999). A review of the literature leads to the conclusion that whether victimization is defined as physical maltreatment, sexual abuse, parental neglect, or bullying, there is a clear connection between victimization and the subsequent misuse of alcohol and other drugs (Gutierres & Puynbroeck, 2006; Hong et al., 2014; Oshri, Carlson, Kwon, Zeichner, & Wickrama, 2017). Unfortunately, the vast majority of studies on this topic are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal in nature. Still, when longitudinal studies have been conducted their results have largely confirmed findings from the less methodologically rigorous cross-sectional studies. Lo, Kim, and Church (2008), for instance, identified a prospective relationship between physical and sexual abuse, on the one hand, and marijuana and polydrug use, on the other hand, whereas Tharp-Taylor, Haviland, and D’Amico (2009) determined that mental and physical bullying victimization predicted alcohol, tobacco, inhalant, and marijuana use in middle school children. This study was designed to address two research questions. The first question addressed was whether abuse victimization at the hands of one’s parents/guardians, bullying victimization at the hands of one’s peers, and the abuse x bullying interaction encourage early involvement in substance misuse. The second research question inquired into whether the victimization‒substance misuse relationship was mediated by variables proposed by various theories and research studies—specifically, cognitive impulsivity, depression, and low self-esteem. This moderated mediation hypothesis was tested in a group of 865 (417 boys, 448 girls) schoolchildren from the Illinois Study of Bullying and Sexual Violence who were 10 to 15 years of age at the time of initial contact. A path analysis based on three waves of data was performed, with results indicating that while abuse and bullying victimization predicted substance misuse one year later, the effect showed no evidence of abuse x bullying moderation and proceeded through one of the three mediators (i.e., cognitive impulsivi). On the basis of these results it was concluded that victimization, whether through parental abuse or peer bullying, increases cognitive impulsivity and that cognitive impulsivity, in turn, encourages early involvement in substance misuse. The practical implications of these results are that interventions designed to counter cognitive impulsivity and encourage cognitive control may be effective in preventing children traumatized by abuse and bullying from entering the early stages of a drug or substance using lifestyle.

Authors

• Dorothy L. Espelage, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Glenn Walters, Kutztown University
  Non-Presenting Author