Frequently Asked Questions about Adolescent Drug Use, Part 4
7. How do other mental health conditions relate to substance use in adolescents?
Drug use in adolescents frequently overlaps with other mental health problems. For example, a teen with a substance use disorder is more likely to have a mood, anxiety, learning, or behavioral disorder too. Sometimes drugs can make accurately diagnosing these other problems complicated.
Adolescents may begin taking drugs to deal with depression or anxiety, for example; on the other hand, frequent drug use may also cause or precipitate those disorders. Adolescents entering drug abuse treatment should be given a comprehensive mental health screening to determine if other disorders are present.
Effectively treating a substance use disorder requires addressing drug abuse and other mental health problems simultaneously.
8. Does treatment of ADHD with stimulant medications like Ritalin® and Adderall® increase risk of substance abuse later in life?
Prescription stimulants are effective at treating attention disorders in children and adolescents, but concerns have been raised that they could make a young person more vulnerable to developing later substance use disorders. On balance, the studies conducted so far have found no differences in later substance use for ADHD-affected children who received treatment versus those that did not.
This suggests that treatment with ADHD medication does not affect (either negatively or positively) an individual’s risk for developing a substance use disorder.