Hazardous drinking, depression, and anxiety among sexual-minority women: self-medication or impaired functioning? - abstract

Objective: Sexual-minority women are at heightened risk for a number of mental health problems, including hazardous alcohol consumption, depression, and anxiety. We examined self-medication and impaired-functioning models of the associations among these variables and interpreted results within a life course framework that considered the unique social stressors experienced by sexual-minority women.

Method: Data were from a sample of 384 women interviewed during the first two waves of the Chicago Health and Life Experiences of Women (CHLEW) study.

Results: Covariance structure modeling revealed that (a) consistent with a self-medication process, anxiety was prospectively associated with hazardous drinking and (b) consistent with an impaired-functioning process, hazardous drinking was prospectively associated with depression.

Conclusions: Our findings support a life course perspective that interprets the mental health of adult sexual-minority women as influenced by adverse childhood experiences, age at drinking onset, first heterosexual intercourse, and first sexual identity disclosure, as well as by processes associated with self-medication and impaired functioning during adulthood. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 74, 565–575, 2013)

http://www.jsad.com/jsad/article/Hazardous_Drinking_Depression_and_Anxiety_Among_SexualMinority_Women_Se/4832.html

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