Happiness, Hope, and Hopelessness: Substance Use Among High School Seniors

Background and Purpose: Substance use is prevalent amongst high schoolers, despite the known consequences of misuse. When an individual experiences poor well-being, they are more susceptible to the onset and continuation of substance use. Well-being encompasses a variety of different concepts including but not limited to general mental health, happiness, and feeling hopeful. It is well-documented that feeling unhappy and hopeless about the future (e.g., hopeless about career goals) is related to substance use. High-schoolers in the South are of particular interest because of the regional vulnerabilities they face including poverty and lower rates of educational aspirations. This study sought to explore the relationship between happiness, hopelessness, post-graduation plans and substance use habits while clustering by region.

Methods: This study used data from the 2018 Monitoring the Future, 12th Graders study. A two-level random intercept model was used to analyze the sample (n=2416) with grouping by geographical region. Level 1 included independent variables of happiness, post-graduation plans, and hopelessness while controlling for gender, race, and age. Level 2 included the grouping variable of geographical region, with the American South as reference. Outcomes at both levels were hard drug use, alcohol use, and marijuana use.

Results: Youth’s reported happiness was negatively associated with hard drug use (b=-10, p=.004) and sense of hopelessness was positively associated with hard drug use (b=.02, p=.02). Youth’s post-graduation plans were associated with marijuana use. Youth who are more likely to attend a four-year college engaged in significantly less marijuana use when compared to other post-graduation plans (b= -.21, p<.001). Similarly, youth who are more likely to attend vocational or technical school engage in significantly less marijuana use when compared to other post-graduation plans (b= -.15, p=.007). Alcohol use was not significantly related to any of the main variables. By grouping participants in regional categories, with the American South as a reference group, the ρ = -0.12. This is the proportion of variance between the American South and other regions, meaning the true intraclass correlation coefficient is low and there is little variation by region.

Conclusions and implications: This study explored the relationship between happiness, hopelessness, and post-graduation plans with substance use habits of American high school seniors. Further, this study explored variation of these parameters by geographical region with particular interest in the American South. This study shows that hopelessness, happiness, and post-graduation plans are related to substance use of different kinds. Unfortunately, there was little variation by region. These findings have implications for the development of well-being programs to deter substance use and orient high schoolers to the future to emphasize what goals are at risk. Future studies should be more inclusive of other elements of well-being and seek to find community-level variation by other groups such as rural versus urban youth.