Posttraumatic Stress, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation, and Coping-Oriented Marijuana Use

Abstract

In an effort to better understand factors that may explain prior findings of a positive relation between posttraumatic stress symptom severity and coping-oriented marijuana use motivation, the present study tested whether the association between posttraumatic stress symptom severity and marijuana use coping motives is mediated by difficulties in emotion regulation. Participants were 79 (39 women; M _age = 22.29 years, SD = 6.99) community-recruited adults who reported (1) lifetime exposure to at least one posttraumatic stress disorder Criterion A traumatic event and (2) marijuana use in the past 30 days. Results indicated that difficulties in emotion regulation, as indexed by the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004), fully mediated the association between posttraumatic stress symptom severity and marijuana use coping motives. Implications for the treatment of co-occurring posttraumatic stress and marijuana use are discussed.

Keywords:

• trauma
• posttraumatic stress
• emotion regulation
• marijuana
• coping

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Veterans Affairs Clinical Science Research and Development Career Development Award–2 granted to Marcel O. Bonn-Miller. Data collection for this investigation was funded by National Research Service Award 1F31 DA21006-02 to Anka A. Vujanovic as well as grants awarded to Dr Michael J. Zvolensky (1 R03 DA016566-01A2) and Erin C. Marshall (1 F31 MH080453-01A1) at the University of Vermont. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Notes

1. As one method of strengthening the interpretability of the current findings, presence of an Axis I disorder was included as a covariate in all analyses. Although the presence of an Axis I disorder was a significant covariate at Step 1 for the analyses of Paths C (β = .23, p < .05) and A (β = .38, p < .01), the results of the present study remained; difficulties in emotion regulation fully mediated the relation between posttraumatic stress symptom severity and coping-oriented marijuana use.