Substance Use across the Adult Life Course

This event is part of a series of Psychology seminars that regularly occurs during the Autumn and Spring terms.

Substance use prevalence and related behaviors, perceptions, and risk vary across the adult life course, yet much of the substance use literature to date has focused on young or middle-aged populations.

This presentation adopts a life course lens to examine patterns of cannabis, nicotine, and alcohol use among young, middle, and older-aged adults in the United States. As a whole, the findings highlight that substance use is dynamic across adulthood; effective substance use assessments and interventions must attend not only to whether substances are used, but how they are used and how risks are understood across different stages of adulthood.

From a life course perspective, these findings provide evidence for age-inclusive research designs and theoretical models that account for cognition, social context, and information environments when studying substance use across the adult lifespan.