High negative emotionality and low constraint are predictive of adolescent solitary drinking, and are mediated by the ability to resist drinking, according to researchers.
A study of 761 adolescent drinkers in Pennsylvania found that the relationship between trait negative emotionality and solitary drinking was entirely mediated by the ability to resist drinking (P = .01). Constraint directly affected solitary drinking (odds ratio = 0.79; P < .01) and indirectly affected drinking habits via the ability to resist drinking (P = .02), reported Kasey G. Creswell, Ph.D., and her associates from the department of psychology and the department of psychiatry at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The findings are important because the habit of drinking alone in adolescence “prospectively predicts alcohol problems in young adulthood above and beyond other established risk factors for alcohol problems,” the authors said in the report. “Thus, it is important to understand factors that explain this risky behavior.”
Read the full article in Addiction.
