Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

Publication Title

Cannabis

Volume

6

Issue

3

Pages

1-8 pp.

Abstract

Objective: Cannabis use is common among college students and many students use cannabis to cope with negative affect. The COVID-19 pandemic was a particularly stressful time for college students. Subsequently, the present study compared college students who reported increases in anxiety/depression symptoms since COVID-19 stay at home orders to those who reported no change in anxiety/depression symptoms on cannabis coping motives, use frequency, and negative consequences. Specifically, we examined whether self-reported changes (i.e., group that indicated increases) in poor mental health during COVID-19 were associated with problematic cannabis use via higher cannabis coping motives. Method: College students (analytic n = 291) completed an online survey for research credit regarding their personal mental health, COVID-19 stressors, and cannabis use behaviors. Results: Individuals who reported increased depressive symptoms (57.4% of the current sample) due to COVID-19 (as compared to individuals whose depressive symptoms remained the same) reported significantly higher cannabis coping motives (d = .79) as well as more cannabis consequences (d = .37). Further, students who reported increased (61.5% of the current sample) anxiety symptoms (as compared to those whose anxiety symptoms stayed the same) also reported significantly higher cannabis coping motives (d = .47). Moreover, we found that students who reported an increase in depressive/anxiety symptoms reported more cannabis consequences via higher endorsement of cannabis coping motives while controlling for gender, cannabis use frequency, and past-week anxiety/depressive symptoms. Discussion: Providing resources for substance-free coping strategies to manage the mental health impact of COVID-19 may be extremely useful for this population.

Rights

Copyright © 2023 Rebecca Dunaief, Adrian Jorge Bravo, James Henson.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: Data and analytic outputs are available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/YNMG4

Original Publication Citation

Dunaief, R., Bravo, A. J., & Henson, J. (2023). Changes in mental health as a predictor of cannabis coping motives and consequences: Examining the impact of COVID-19 among college students. Cannabis, 6(3), 1-8 pp. https://publications.sciences.ucf.edu/cannabis/index.php/Cannabis/article/view/163

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