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ABSTRACT
Background
Psychological distress is an important predictor of heavy drinking, especially among lower-income drinkers. The mechanisms underlying this effect are not well understood. One possibility is that distressed individuals are more vulnerable to obsessive and compulsive thoughts about drinking. We hypothesized that: 1) distress would predict obsessive and compulsive thoughts about alcohol, which in turn would predict drinking and 2) effects would be particularly pronounced among lower-income drinkers.
Methods
Young adults (n = 105) were recruited from an urban university and completed the Brief Symptoms Index (BSI), the Obsessive-Compulsive Drinking Scale (OCDS), and a 90-day timeline follow-back (TLFB) drinking interview.
Results
Consistent with the hypotheses, drinkers with higher distress (BSI) exhibited greater obsessive and compulsive drinking-related thoughts, which in turn predicted drinking over the past 90 days (p < .0001). Path analyses revealed that the BSI had a significant indirect effect on drinking outcomes through increased OCDS. Furthermore, conditional process analyses revealed that effects were particularly pronounced among drinkers with lower household incomes.
Conclusions
Findings highlight the importance of psychological distress as a predictor of obsessive and compulsive thoughts about alcohol, as well as drinking behavior, and underscore the critical need to address psychological functioning among lower-income drinkers in particular.
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).