Differentiating the Roles of Major Environmental Risk Dimensions in Predicting Early Adolescent Substance Use Initiation

Early environmental adversity has lasting implications for multiple psychosocial outcomes, including externalizing psychopathology and substance use initiation. Little prior research has taken a multidimensional approach to conceptualizing environmental adversity, its relationship to externalizing psychopathology, and how together they may predict substance use initiation. This study examined how dimensional measures of financial hardship, neighborhood disadvantage, family conflict, and cumulative trauma predicted Substance Use Initiation (SUI) by age 15 in a subsample of substance use naive individuals from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 3,811). SUI was defined as a single dose or more of any substance (alcohol, nicotine/tobacco, cannabis, other illicit substances, etc.) and was coded as a dichotomous categorical variable. An Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted to create latent variables of family conflict, economic deprivation, and neighborhood disadvantage. A sum score of adverse events from the KSADS PTSD scale was used to measure trauma. Structural equation modeling was conducted to examine whether measures of environmental adversity predicted SUI, and test whether symptoms of psychopathology mediated that association. After controlling for sex and age, only economic deprivation at the family level and externalizing symptoms were significant predictors of SUI. Our results also supported an indirect mediation pathway in which family conflict impacted SUI indirectly through its association with externalizing symptoms. These findings may help improve public health efforts for substance use prevention by identifying environmental pathways to adolescent SUI.