Relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences and substance use in youth offenders in Singapore

Background: Adverse Childhood Experiences are associated with worse outcomes in delinquency and substance use. Objective: Current research is overwhelmingly from Western perspectives, leaving a gap in nonWestern, low crime-rate jurisdictions. Moreover, there exists a gap in characterizing the effect of ACE frequency on delinquency. We extend existing research by examining relationships between ACE and substance use in youth offenders in Singapore. Participants and setting: The study included 790 youth offenders (669 males, Mage = 17.59 years) from a longitudinal study on youth offending. Methods: Multiple regression was performed to examine relationships between self-reported ACEs and substance use. Latent Class Analysis was conducted to identify classes of substance use onset. The relationship between these classes and cumulative ACEs and ACE frequency were then tested using multiple regression. Results: Youth offenders who consume alcohol (B = 0.66, p = .002) and illicit drugs (B = 0.38, p = .02) had more cumulative and more frequent ACEs than those who do not. Moreover, we found a positive relationship between ACEs and substance use frequency. Those who started taking substances in childhood had significantly more ACEs and had worse drug dependency problems than those who started later (t = 5.93, p < .0001). Additionally, there was a positive relationship between ACEs and drug use dependency (B = 0.11, p = .03). Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of ACEs as risk factors for substance use. This underscores the need for comprehensive screening and treatment of ACEs and substance use in the rehabilitative context.