Workplace harassment, psychological distress, and alcohol problems: A longitudinal study

Abstract

Objectives

Addresses the role that psychological distress (ie depression and anxiety) plays in mediating the relationship between workplace harassment (ie sexual and generalized workplace harassment) and increased alcohol problems among employed college students.

Participants

Two waves of data were collected from 905 study participants sampled from eight colleges and universities in the Midwestern United States.

Methods

A mediation analysis was conducted using Hayes’s PROCESS macro with bootstrapping.

Results

The findings indicated that that workplace harassment predicts increased alcohol problems, and that the association between harassment and alcohol problems is mediated by psychological distress.

Conclusions

Workplace harassment is a prevalent problem associated with increased alcohol problems and poor mental health for both genders in the U.S. collegiate workforce. Mental health practitioners and counselors at colleges can help students identify such issues and determine which steps a student might take to address them.

Keywords:

• sexual harassment
• generalized workplace harassment
• depression
• anxiety
• college drinking

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of University of Illinois at Chicago.

Additional information

Funding

This article was supported by grant AA018138 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to the third author. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism or the National Institutes of Health. The data were collected by the UIC Survey Research Laboratory.