New Article Feature: Temporal Trends in Psychological Distress and Co-occurring Substance Use in Grade 7–12 Students

“This work demonstrates steep increases in psychological distress among adolescents and indicates that substance use remains important to consider and address alongside distress when designing and evaluating mental health and substance related policies and prevention programs. However, on balance, changes in the risk factors driving increases in distress seem to be equally impacting adolescents using and not using substances. Future research is needed to understand the shift in shared and independent risk and protective factors for psychological distress and substance use among younger generations of adolescents.”

Check out the new original investigation, entitled “Examining temporal trends in psychological distress and the co-occurrence of common substance use in a population-based sample of grade 7–12 students from 2013 to 2019” led by Dr. Jillian Halladay, in collaboration with Dr. Matthew Sunderland, Dr. Cath Chapman, Dr. Ruth Repchuck, Dr. Kathy Georgiades, Angela Boak, Dr. Hayley Hamilton, and Dr. Tim Slade.

This article was published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology in February 2024.