Motivations for the nonmedical use of prescription drugs in a longitudinal national sample of young adults.

Introduction: People's motivations for nonmedical use of prescription drugs (NMUPD) are not well studied, particularly in longitudinal representative samples. However, understanding which motivations are most popular and how these change over time for specific groups is important to inform interventions for NMUPD.

Methods: The current study examined how young adults' motives for NMUPD changed over young adulthood, using a nationally representative sample of 12,223 young adults in 36 cohorts (1976-2012) as part of the Monitoring the Future study across three biennial waves (waves 1, 2, 3: modal ages 19/20, 21/22, and 23/24 years).

College students' using marijuana to sleep relates to frequency, problematic use, and sleep problems.

Given the rising rates of insufficient sleep and the popularity of marijuana, we investigated using marijuana as a sleep aid, marijuana use frequency, problematic marijuana use, and sleep problems. Participants included a convenience sample of college students who endorsed using marijuana in the past year from May to December 2013 ( = 354; 68% female, 57% White). Path analyses investigated if using marijuana to sleep predicted: (1) marijuana use outcomes and (2) sleep problems; and if sleep problems predicted marijuana use outcomes.

A Longitudinal Study of the Bidirectional Relations Between Anxiety Symptoms and Peer Victimization in Urban Adolescents.

The current study examined bidirectional relations between anxious symptoms and two forms of peer victimization (i.e., overt and relational) within an underrepresented sample of urban adolescents during key transition periods (i.

Use of prescription drugs and future delinquency among adolescent offenders.

Non-medical use of prescription drugs (NMUPD) by adolescents is a significant public health concern. The present study investigated the profile of NMUPD in 1349 adolescent offenders from the Pathways to Desistance project, and whether NMUPD predicted future delinquency using longitudinal data. Results indicated that increased frequency and recency of NMUPD in adolescent offenders are related to some demographic factors, as well as increased risk for violence exposure, mental health diagnoses, other drug use, and previous delinquency, suggesting that severity of NMUPD is important to consider.