Drug and alcohol use and family characteristics: a study among Brazilian high-school students

The present work employs a multivariate analysis technique to study, simultaneously, family relations and alcohol/drug consumption among 16,378 Brazilian high-school students. The analysis is centered on the relation between subjective or objective family situations and consumption. Subjective situations are measured by adolescents' perception of their families, that is, the family's environmental "climate"--whether violent situations occur at home, whether there is frequent dialogue about the youngsters' problems, and whether they perceive interest on the part of parents. Objective situations refer to the conjugal status of parents. Results pointed to family violence as the factor most frequently associated with alcohol/drug use behavior. It was also found that the family's environmental climate constitutes a more important factor than the conjugal status of parents, when it comes to the development of drug use behavior. Therefore, the impact of this last variable (whether parents are living together) is determined by environmental conditions: when those conditions are favorable (no violence, problems habitually talked about, parents concerned with their offspring) the fact that parents were effectively living together meant a smaller probability of alcohol/drug use; when these conditions were unfavorable, the same fact was associated with a greater probability of consumption.