Childhood conduct problems, potential snares in adolescence, and problematic substance use in Brazil
Fauve Stocker, Jon Heron, Matthew Hickman, Fernando C. Wehrmeister, Helen Gonçalves, Ana Maria B. Menezes, Joseph Murray, Gemma Hammerton

TL;DR
Childhood conduct problems in Brazil are weakly linked to later substance use, with school noncompletion and gang involvement playing key roles.
Contribution
This study explores pathways linking childhood conduct problems to substance use in Brazil using a large birth cohort.
Findings
Conduct problems were weakly associated with police arrest and school noncompletion but not gang membership.
Gang membership and police arrest were strongly linked to illicit drug and hazardous alcohol use.
School noncompletion was not significantly associated with substance use after adjusting for confounders.
Abstract
Childhood conduct problems are associated with problematic substance use in adulthood; however, little is known about what might explain these associations outside of high‐income countries where the majority of research is conducted. Data were analyzed from 4599 young people from the 1993 Pelotas Birth Cohort in Brazil. The exposure was conduct problems (age 11 years). Outcomes included hazardous alcohol consumption and illicit drug use (age 22 years). Mediators included police arrest (by age 18 years), gang membership (ages 18 and 22 years), and school noncompletion (by age 22 years). We performed counterfactual mediation using the parametric g‐computation formula to estimate the indirect effect via all three mediators simultaneously. After adjusting for confounders (including hyperactivity problems), conduct problems were weakly associated with police arrest (OR [95% CI] = 1.45 [0.97,…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSubstance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Crime Patterns and Interventions
