A behavioral genetic examination of the relation between adolescent polysubstance use and educational attainment
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Most individuals who use substances use more than one, which is referred to as polysubstance use. Polysubstance use has consistently been related to poorer outcomes compared to use of a single substance, including in regard to educational attainment. However, whether this association reflects a causal relationship or a shared liability giving rise to both adolescent substance use and early school dropout was unclear. In this dissertation project, I conducted a series of behavioral and molecular genetic studies to explore the nature of the relationship between adolescent polysubstance use and educational attainment. Analyses also focused on parsing substance-specific from general substance use effects on educational attainment and on identifying potential gene-environment interactions/correlations between adolescent substance use and educational attainment. Across the three studies, a couple of potentially causal substance-specific effects on high school noncompletion were identified (i.e., for sedative and inhalant/solvent use), but most of the association between adolescent substance use and educational attainment appeared to operate through general substance use effects that were non-causal in nature. The effects of genetic propensity for educational attainment and adolescent substance use operated largely independently to influence actual educational outcomes. The one exception to this was alcohol use, where genetic propensity for educational attainment predicted a greater likelihood of adolescent alcohol use. Results have several implications, including (1) highlighting the need to account for co-occurring substance use in studies of specific substance use effects, (2) supporting the idea that most negative outcomes associated with substance use operate through general rather than substance-specific mechanisms, (3) informing potential targets for prevention and intervention efforts to improve educational outcomes, and (4) supporting the adoption of transdiagnostic approaches to improve our understanding of the etiology of substance use and other externalizing behaviors.
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Ph. D.