Consumo de cannabis y competencias emocionales en adolescentes

Abstract

Emotional competences are relevant for the development of interpersonal skills in adolescents and they constitute an important indicator of adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment. A deficit in emotional competences has been considered as an important risk factor that makes it difficult to deal successfully with problems for the life (Extremera y Fernández-Berrocal, 2013). The goal of the present study was to examine whether consumption of cannabis in adolescents is related with personal strengths and levels of well-being (life satisfaction, feelings of happiness, and absence of loneliness). The sample comprised 596 students from the last course of Secondary Education, selected by means of a two-stage cluster sampling of 24 public and subsidized schools of the city of Alicante. The students completed the module of questions about cannabis consumption whitin the Spanish Survey of Drug Use (ESTUDES, 2010), the Spanish version of the questionnaire of PSI-2, Personal Strengths Inventory-2 (Liau et al., 2012, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985), and two criterial questions to assess feelings of happiness and loneliness. The results showed that the adolescents who reported having used cannabis sometime in their life did not obtained significant differences in the PSI-2 dimensions (awareness and emotion regulation, goal setting, empathy and social competence). However, lower mean´s scores were obtained in all dimensions with exception for social competences. In addition, students who smoked cannabis were found to have higher scores in the Satisfaction with Life Scale (p<.01) as well as in the feeling of happiness (p<.01). These results show that it is needed to address the risk and protective factors of initiation of cannabis consumption in adolescents to intervene high risk groups.