The Association Between Mindfulness Facets and Substance Use via Emotional Psychopathology and Coping Motives in Argentinian College Students

Abstract

Background: Prior studies suggest that lower levels of mindfulness contribute to the motivation of using alcohol to cope with distress. Research examining this possibility is scarce or limited to alcohol, but not marijuana, related outcomes. Objectives: We examined separate models (for alcohol and for marijuana) to determine the associations between trait mindfulness (describing, acting with awareness, non-judging, non-reactivity) and alcohol and marijuana outcomes (use indicators and negative consequences) via emotional psychopathology (i.e., a latent variable assessing symptoms of depression and anxiety) and alcohol/marijuana coping motives. Results: The final analytic sample consisted of 456 participants (Mean age = 22.96 ± 3.12 years; 66.2% women) for the alcohol model; and 232 participants (Mean age = 22.96 ± 3.01 years; 66.2% women) for the marijuana model. Two path models were conducted, such that indirect paths were examined for each trait mindfulness facet on alcohol/marijuana outcomes (e.g., describing → emotional psychopathology → alcohol coping motives → binge drinking frequency). Within the comprehensive alcohol model, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging and non-reactivity were associated with less binge drinking frequency and lower number of alcohol-related negative consequences via lower severity of emotional psychopathology symptoms and lower endorsement of drinking to cope motives. For the marijuana model, describing, acting with awareness, and non-judging of inner experience were associated with less marijuana quantity (grams) consumed and lower number of marijuana-related negative consequences via lower severity of emotional psychopathology symptoms and lower endorsement of marijuana coping motives. Conclusions: Prevention and intervention programs of alcohol and marijuana in Argentina may benefit from improving mindfulness skills and targeting emotional psychopathology and motives to use drugs, to prevent or reduce negative drug-related consequences.

Keywords:

• Mindfulness
• emotional psychopathology
• alcohol
• marijuana
• coping motives
• college students

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to all the college students who completed the online survey.

Ethical approval

All the procedures endorsed the ethical guidelines for human research of the American Psychological Association (2016), the Declaration of Helsinki, and the National Law 25.326 for the Protection of Personal Data (Argentina). All the procedures were approved by the institutional review board of the participating research department.

Author contributions

Pilatti and Correa conceptualized the research questions and conducted the analyses. Pilatti wrote the first draft of the manuscript and subsequent versions of it. Correa wrote part of the methods, results, and discussion sections and edited all the sections of the first draft and subsequent versions of it. Michelini wrote part of the methods and discussion sections and edited all the sections of the first draft and subsequent versions of it. Bravo supervised all the analyses, wrote part of the discussion section, and edited all the sections of the first draft and subsequent versions of it. Pacini collected the data and wrote part of the introduction and methods sections. Pautassi wrote part of the introduction and discussion sections and edited all the sections of the first draft and subsequent versions of it. All authors contributed to and approved of the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Secretary of Science and Technology (FONCYT, grant numbers #PICT 2018-3170 and #PICT 2019-0457), by grants from the Secretary of Science and Technology-National University of Córdoba (SECyT-UNC) to Angelina Pilatti and Yanina Michelini. This work was also supported by National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina). CONICET, FONCyT, and SECyT-UNC had no role in the study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the article for publication.