Vega W A, Apospori E, Gil A G, Zimmerman R S, Warheit G J
School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley 94720, USA.
Psychiatry. 1996 Summer;59(2):128-44. doi: 10.1080/00332747.1996.11024755.
Adolescents treated in clinical settings for drug use problems are often observed to have low self-esteem. This has led some researchers to the belief that mood or personality characteristics of adolescents predispose them to drug use. However, longitudinal field studies have failed to confirm a direct relationship between low self-esteem and substance abuse (Petraitis et al. 1995). Evidently, if an important causal relationship exists between self-esteem and drug use in the nonclinical adolescent population, it is complex and mediated by other factors. To address this issue, explanatory theories are needed that can organize the relationships between drug abuse and its antecendent causes including low self-esteem. One of the few theoretical approaches that has been put forward for empirical verification is the esteem-enhancement theory of Kaplan, Johnson, and Bailey (1986a, 1987, 1988).
在临床环境中接受药物使用问题治疗的青少年常常被观察到自尊心较低。这使得一些研究人员认为，青少年的情绪或性格特征使他们易染上药物使用问题。然而，纵向实地研究未能证实自尊心低与药物滥用之间存在直接关系（彼得雷蒂斯等人，1995年）。显然，如果在非临床青少年群体中自尊心与药物使用之间存在重要的因果关系，那么这种关系是复杂的，并且由其他因素介导。为了解决这个问题，需要有能够梳理药物滥用与其前因（包括自尊心低）之间关系的解释性理论。已被提出用于实证验证的少数理论方法之一是卡普兰、约翰逊和贝利（1986a、1987、1988年）的自尊增强理论。
