The prevalence and factors associated with medicine use among secondary school students. Mokotów Study 2020

Introduction: The conducted study's two aims were to: 1) assess in three waves in 2012, 2016 and 2020 the changes in the prevalence of adoles-cents' medicine use for headaches, stomach aches, difficulties in falling asleep, nervousness, bad or depressive mood and lack of energy as well as corresponding health complaints and 2) explore factors associated with medicine use, including respondents' well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Material and methods: All three waves include 15-year-old students from randomly selected classes of Warsaw schools, with about 800 par-ticipants in each wave. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 wave was carried out online. Analyses of the factors associated with medi-cine use included sociodemographic factors, corresponding health complaints and selected individual and social factors. Hierarchical lo-gistic regression models with Wald statistics were used. Results: Comparison of the last wave (2020) with previous waves (2012 and 2016) indicated a de-crease in the proportion of girls and boys who use pain relievers. After control for sex and cor-responding health complaints, logistic regres-sion indicated that psychological distress, sen-sation-seeking, impulsivity, family support and difficulties in coping with pandemic-related re-strictions increased the risk of medicine use. Par-ents' higher education level reduced the risk of ad-olescent children's medicine use. Discussion: A significant proportion of Warsaw adolescents use medicines, especially pain reliev-ers. Medicine use is associated with psychological distress, sensation seeking and impulsivity. Ad-olescents who did not perform well under pan-demic constraints were more likely to use medi-cines for mental health problems. Conclusions: Improving young people's com-petences, including the ability to cope with stress, should be the subject of health promotion and pre-vention activities.