Posttraumatic stress severity is associated with coping motives for alcohol use among in-patient and community recruited adolescents

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: A growing body of work suggests individuals with more severe post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are at higher risk for developing problematic alcohol use outcomes. Extending work from the adult literature, the present study was the first to examine the extent to which PTSS is related to drinking motives for alcohol use in both clinical and non-clinical samples of adolescents.

Design: Hierarchical regression analyses were used to predict coping motives for alcohol use from PTSS, above and beyond demographic variables, alcohol use frequency, and other alcohol use motives.

Methods: Trauma-exposed adolescents before entering treatment (Sample 1 n = 41) and recruited from the local community (Sample 2 n = 55) self-reported on PTSS and alcohol use motives.

Results: PTSS positively predicted coping motives for alcohol use after controlling for age, gender, and alcohol use frequency.

Conclusions: The current study highlights the need to consider both PTSS severity, as well as underlying cognitive mechanisms (e.g., motives), to better understand the etiology of problematic alcohol use among trauma-exposed youth. Future work focused on clarifying the trajectory of alcohol use motives and problems as a function of PTSS is needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-traumatic stress
• alcohol use
• adolescence
• coping
• motives

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors [RMC or HB], upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Nathan Kearns http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3037-3919

Notes

1 Exclusion categories were not mutually exclusive.

2 Data are drawn from the same dataset used by Blumenthal et al. (2015). Here, we directly examine PTSS (c.f., trauma exposure) and alcohol motives (c.f., expectancies) among only trauma exposed participants (c.f., trauma exposed and non-exposed).

3 Because PTSS was positively associated with conformity motives at the zero order level (r = .38), similar post-hoc regression analyses were conducted examining PTSS as a predictor above and beyond other covariates. The overall model was statistically significant (F[7, 33] = 2.958, p = .016) and PTSS remained a unique predictor (ΔR² = .09, p = .04).

Additional information

Funding

This project was partially supported by a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism National Research Service Award [grant number F31 AA018589] awarded to the last author.