Investigating the association between multiple substance Use and dating violence involvement among U.S adolescents

Adolescent dating violence and substance use are clinical and public health concerns. Prior meta-analytic studies indicate that about 20% of adolescents reported having experienced physical dating violence (PDV) and 10% reported sexual dating violence (SDV). This study aims to assess the prevalence of dating violence, and the association between substance use and dating violence among adolescents. Our study population is derived from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)a cross-sectional, nationally representative survey of United States (U.S) adolescents. The sample comprised 13,677 adolescents between the ages of 13–19 years currently enrolled in school. Descriptive analysis estimated the prevalence of dating violence and substance use. Multiple logistic regression adjusted for confounders of the association between substance use and dating violence. The confounders adjusted for include sex, school grade, race, academic grade, and duration of night sleep. The prevalence of PDV and SDV was each 8.2%. Only 2.6% of this nationally representative sample had experienced both PDV and SDV. Adolescents who used three or more substances had 2.1 times higher odds of PDV (OR = 2.10, 95% CI = 1.27–3.47, p < 0.0001), and SDV (OR = 2.11, 95% CI = 1.34–3.34, p < 0.0001) respectively, and 2.8 (OR = 2.75, 95% CI = 1.34–5.61, p < 0.0001) times higher odds of both PDV and SDV in the past month. Multiple substance use increases the odds of dating violence. Policy and interventions should be focused on preventing substance use initiation among substance-naïve adolescents and to advocate abstinence and gradual reduction of substances used to mitigate the prevalence of dating violence.