The role of monitoring skills in mediating the association between parent's hazardous alcohol consumption and adolescents' drinking.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to investigate whether parental monitoring skills mediate the effect of hazardous parental alcohol consumption on adolescents' lifetime alcohol use. METHODS: This three wave longitudinal study was conducted with 884 families (n = 1,768 participants) to evaluate the effectiveness of a family-based drug prevention program for adolescents and parents across 12 Brazilian cities. We used structural equation mediation modeling to analyze the effect of hazardous parental alcohol consumption at baseline on adolescents' lifetime alcohol use at 12-month follow-up, mediated by parental monitoring skills latent dimension at 6-month follow-up. RESULTS: We found a significant indirect effect of parents' hazardous alcohol use on adolescents' alcohol use through parental monitoring (OR:1.18, 95%CI:1.02;1.36). CONCLUSION: Our finding underscores the importance of comprehensive preventive family alcohol approaches targeting adolescent alcohol use, which should consider both parental drinking behavior and monitoring practices.

Bullying as a Risk Factor for Eating Disorder Behaviors Among Students: Secondary Analysis for a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial.

This study aimed to examine whether being a victim of bullying predicted body dissatisfaction and eating disorder behavior (EDB). In this study, we performed secondary analysis from a cluster randomized controlled trial among 5208 eight grade students from 73 public schools in three Brazilian cities. Data were collected in 2019 through an anonymous self-report questionnaire on bullying, body dissatisfaction, and EDB. We used factor analysis, multivariate linear regression, and multinomial logistic regression to verify whether being a victim of bullying during the baseline results in body dissatisfaction and EDB at the nine months follow-up for the control and intervention groups. Our results showed that being female (OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.22-1.63) is a risk factor for dissatisfaction by overweight. Bullying was not a predictor of body dissatisfaction; however, being a victim of bullying (ß 0.40, 95% CI 0.35-0.46) is a predictor of having more EDB, independent of the exposure to the program. Therefore, bullying deserves attention in the school environment.

The Indirect Effect of #Tamojunto2.0 Program on Bullying Through Reduction of Alcohol Use Initiation.

PURPOSE: The Brazilian version of the prevention program Unplugged, #Tamojunto, has had a positive effect on bullying prevention. However, the curriculum has recently been revised, owing to its negative effects on alcohol outcomes. This study evaluated the effect of the new version, #Tamojunto2.0, on bullying. For adolescents exposed to the school-based program #Tamojunto2.0, we investigated (1) whether the prevalence of bullying victimization and perpetration was reduced, (2) whether this reduction was moderated by gender, and (3) whether the program's effect on bullying was mediated by adolescents' alcohol use. METHODS: A cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted using 5,208 eighth-grade students from 73 Brazilian public schools. Baseline data were collected before program implementation, and follow-up data were collected nine months later. We used a multilevel mixed-effects model to examine the effect of #Tamojunto2.0 on bullying, and a moderation model to test the moderating effect of gender on program outcomes. A mediation analysis was performed to determine lifetime alcohol use as a mediator of the intervention effect on bullying. RESULTS: We found that the positive effect of #Tamojunto2.0 on bullying victimization (ß = -0.019, 95% confidence interval = -0.035; -0.002) and perpetration (ß = -0.027, 95% confidence interval = -0.051; -0.004) was mediated by a decrease in alcohol use, but not moderated by gender. DISCUSSION: #Tamojunto2.0 program can be indirectly effective in the prevention of bullying by decreasing adolescents' alcohol use. Moreover, alcohol and drug use prevention programs might also affect bullying outcomes through mediation, and we suggest that future studies consider this.