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Sexual minority youth at increased risk for polysubstance abuse

Young people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual were more likely to use more than one substance — such as alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes — compared with heterosexual youth, findings published in Drug & Alcohol Dependence revealed.

Substance use disparities were the most robust for bisexual youth, according to the results.

"The experiences of youth who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are underreported in research, generally. In research we tend to focus on the averages,” Sarah S. Dermody, PhD, assistant professor at Oregon State University School of Psychological Science, said in a press release. “In this study, we're trying to better understand the intersectionality of sexual orientation, race and gender with substance use. We want to better understand what may be driving the differences in the substance use."

Using data from the cross-sectional 2015 CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, Dermody compared patterns of polysubstance use between sexual minority and heterosexual youth. In total, 15,624 participants completed the survey.

She used latent mixture modeling to identify subgroups based on participant-reported past-month use of alcohol, cigarettes, chewing tobacco/snus/snuff, cigars/cigarillos/little cigars, e-cigarettes and marijuana. Dermody compared the risk for being in each substance-use class between youth who self-identified as heterosexual and gay/lesbian, bisexual or not sure, adjusting for race/ethnicity, sex and age.

The results showed that sexual minority youth were at higher risk for using each type of drug — alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes — compared with heterosexual youth and were at higher risk for polysubstance abuse overall. There were five classes of substance use: non-users; alcohol users; nicotine/marijuana co-users; polysubstance and e-cigarette users; and polysubstance and tobacco users.

Compared with heterosexual participants, gay/lesbian youth were at increased risk for using nicotine and marijuana together and participants who identified as unsure were at increased risk for being polysubstance and tobacco users. Moreover, young bisexual people were more likely to belong to all of the substance-using groups. The study also reported that larger sexual minority-related disparities in substance use were found for female relative to male youth and for minority race/ethnicity youth.

"This data shows definitively that polysubstance use is an issue among many youths who identify as sexual minorities, meaning they are facing added health risks,” Dermody said in the release. “But, there are also differences among the subgroups of youth who identify as sexual minorities, suggesting we need to look beyond the averages to understand what factors may be influencing substance use in this population.

“The findings suggest that it may be good practice for health care providers who serve these youth to do assessments for substance use as part of regular health screenings,” she continued. – by Savannah Demko

Disclosure : Dermody reports no relevant financial disclosures.