The moderating role of emotion dysregulation in the relation between potentially morally injurious experiences and alcohol misuse among military Veterans

ABSTRACT

Alcohol misuse is a serious and pervasive problem among US military Veterans. The commission or omission of acts that transgress important moral standards, known as potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs), has been theoretically and empirically linked to alcohol misuse in this population. Emotion dysregulation has been implicated in the pathogenesis of alcohol misuse and may be relevant in the context of PMIEs. The goal of this study was to examine the roles of negative and positive emotion dysregulation in the relation between PMIEs and alcohol misuse. Participants were a community sample of US military Veterans who were predominantly white (69.5%) and male (71.6%), with a mean age of 38.00. The interaction between PMIEs and both negative and positive emotion dysregulation (separately) significantly predicted alcohol misuse. Simple slopes tests revealed that the relation between PMIEs and alcohol misuse was only significant at high levels of negative and positive emotion dysregulation. Findings underscore the potential utility of targeting both negative and positive emotion dysregulation in alcohol misuse interventions for military Veterans experiencing PMIEs.

KEYWORDS:

• Military Veterans
• potentially morally injurious events
• alcohol misuse
• negative emotion dysregulation
• positive emotion dysregulation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Work on this paper by the last author (NHW) was supported, in part, by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant [K23DA039327].