Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 14, 2026

Modeling Alcohol Consumption in Rodents Using Two-Bottle Choice Home Cage Drinking and Microstructural Analysis
Published on: November 8, 2024
Drinking to cope mediates the relationship between depression and alcohol risk: Different pathways for college and
Shannon R Kenney1, Bradley J Anderson2, Michael D Stein3
1Behavioral Medicine Department, Butler Hospital, Providence, RI 02906, United States; Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, United States.
Background:
It is well-established that drinking to cope with negative affective states mediates the relationship between depressed mood and alcohol risk outcomes among college students. Whether non-college emerging adults exhibit a similar pathway remains unknown. In the current study, we compared the mediating role of coping motives in the relationship between depressive symptoms and drinking risk outcomes (heavy episodic drinking and alcohol problems) in college and non-college emerging adult subgroups.
Methods:
Participants were three hundred forty-one community-recruited 18-25year olds reporting past month alcohol use. We used a structural equation modeling (SEM) for our primary mediation analysis and bias-corrected bootstrap resampling for testing the statistical significance of mediation.
Results:
Participants averaged 20.8 (±1.97) years of age, 49% were female, 67.7% were White, 34.6% were college students, and 65.4% were non-college emerging adults. College and non-college emerging adults reported similar levels of drinking, alcohol problems, and drinking to cope with negative affect, and drinking to cope was associated with alcohol-related problems in both samples. However, while drinking to cope mediated the relationship between depressed mood and alcohol problems among students, it did not mediate the pathway among non-college emerging adults.
Conclusions:
These findings caution against extending college-based findings to non-college populations and underscore the need to better understand the role of coping motives and other intervening factors in pathways linking depressed mood and alcohol-related risk in non-college emerging adults.
More Related Videos
07:31Murine Drinking Models in the Development of Pharmacotherapies for Alcoholism: Drinking in the Dark and Two-bottle Choice
Published on: January 7, 2019
08:42Design and Implementation of an fMRI Study Examining Thought Suppression in Young Women with, and At-risk, for Depression
Published on: May 19, 2015
Related Concept Videos
Relationship Formation
CNS Depressants: Alcohol and Nicotine
Relationship with Other Adult Family Members and Siblings
Long-term Depression
Freezing Point Depression and Boiling Point Elevation
The boiling point of a liquid is the temperature at which its vapor pressure is equal to ambient atmospheric pressure. Since the vapor pressure of a solution is lowered due to the presence of nonvolatile solutes, it stands to reason that the solution’s boiling point will subsequently be increased. Vapor pressure increases with temperature, and so a solution will require a higher temperature than will pure solvent to achieve any given vapor pressure, including one...
Depressants
Alcohol is a common depressant that can induce a sense of relaxation and reduced inhibition at low doses. Contrary to its occasional...