Socioeconomic Factors Associated with Psychoactive Substance Abuse by Adolescents in Serbia

Adolescence is a period of transition from childhood to adulthood, characterized by efforts to achieve the objectives related to the expectations of the culture, as well as the requirements of the physical, mental, emotional, and social development. It has its own characteristics in the biological, psychological, and social terms, with a process of identity formation, the development of social, and moral norms of behavior (McCabe et al., 2017). Adolescence is a period of great settings in which experimentation with psychoactive substances is common and can, in some cases, lead to the development of long-term addictive behavior (Jeannin et al., 2013). Psychoactive substances include licit, illicit, and prescribed psychoactive medications. Alcohol and cigarette are among the licit and controlled drugs, while marijuana, cocaine, heroin, lysergic diethylamide (LSD), crack, and ecstasy are illicit drugs (Kassa et al., 2014). The use of psychoactive substances in adolescents is often associated with a socioeconomic factors, such as gender, age, type, race, ethnicity, family, and social structures, socioeconomic status of the family (Gebreslassie et al., 2013). Significant risk factors for psychoactive substances use among adolescents were poor parental involvement in the child’s education, conflictual family relationships, and drug abuse by the parents, friends, and neighbors (Kpozehouen et al., 2015; Pisarska et al., 2016). Also, parental alcoholism, parental divorce before age 18, and parental death before age 18 increased the odds of abuse psychoactive substances (Vaughan et al., 2017). Socioeconomic environment in which young people were raised as children predicts their behavior in young adulthood. Understanding this relationship, is an important step in identifying persons at risk (Tobler et al., 2000). In order to identify the risk factors and protective factors associated with psychoactive substances abuse among young people, it is very important tomeasure how socioeconomic factors influence the attitudes and behavior of young toward the use of psychoactive substances (Carter et al., 2010; Patrick et al., 2012).