The Authors’ Own Words: Predicting Young Adults’ Risk for Engaging in Prescription Drug Misuse in Daily Life from Individual, Partner, and Relationship Factors

The Authors’ Own Words:

We ask authors to describe their impressions regarding the implications of their accepted work, how their findings will change practice, and what is noteworthy about the work.

Predicting Young Adults’ Risk for Engaging in Prescription Drug Misuse in Daily Life from Individual, Partner, and Relationship Factors

Lauren M. Papp, PhD & Chrystyna D. Kouros, PhD

Substance Abuse Vol. 38, Iss. 1, 2017

“Previous research has primarily relied on retrospective and global assessments to identify factors that predict which individuals are most likely to misuse prescription drugs. Our findings contribute to–and extend– this work by assessing prescription drug misuse as it occurs in daily life and multiple risk and proactive factors for misuse simultaneously. The findings indicated that females’ misuse is predicted by both individual, partner, and relationships factors, whereas males’ misuse was not predicted by any of these factors when considered together. This suggests that prescription drug misuse among young adult females is complex and preventive interventions may need to consider multiple potential targets of influence for reducing misuse. The findings also suggest that the motivating factors or triggers for prescription drug misuse may differ for males and females; thus, another practical implication of the findings is that interventions and treatments may need to be tailored differently for men compared to women to increase their effectiveness at reducing prescription drug misuse.”