Socio-economic differences in use of prescribed and over-the-counter medicine for pain and psychological problems among Danish adolescents—a longitudinal study

The objective for this study was to investigatesocio-economic status (SES) differentials in the use of overthe-counter and prescribed medicine for pain and psychologicalproblems among adolescents. Data consisted of questionnairedata on medicine use and health status, collected from17- to 18-year-old adolescents (n=2,400) during secondround of theWest Jutland cohort study 2007, and register dataon prescribed medicine use, parental educational level andhousehold income. We used multiple logistic regression analysisto calculate odd ratios for self-reported and register-baseduse of medicine for pain and psychological problems accordingto parental educational level and household income.Young girls used twice as much medicine for pain and psychologicalproblems compared to young boys. SES differencesbased on parental educational level were directly associatedwith the use of prescribed medicine for psychologicalproblems, and SES differences based on household incomewere directly associated with overall medicine use and use ofover-the-counter medicine. Some of the SES differentialsdisappeared or decreased after adjusting for health status.There were no SES differentials in the use of prescribedmedicine for pain. Conclusion: The risk of use of prescribedmedicine for psychological problems increased in adolescentswith decreasing parental education, while the risk of overallmedicine use and use of over-the-counter medicine was increasedin adolescents from low household income.Furthermore, the results indicate that some of the SES differentialsin medicine use could be explained by a difference inhealth status across SES