Childhood Maltreatment and Alcohol Use Among College-Enrolled Women: The Roles of Distress Tolerance and Negative...

Gender disparities in adverse alcohol-related consequences are well established, with women experiencing greater adverse health consequences than men even at lower levels of alcohol consumption. Childhood maltreatment has been implicated in these disparities, with maltreatment-exposed women demonstrating elevated risk for heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems in adulthood. Distress tolerance and negative urgency have been proposed as mechanisms linking maltreatment to adverse alcohol outcomes; however, research examining these mechanisms specifically among women remains limited.

This study (N = 889 female university students; M_age = 22.35, SD_age = 4.79) examined distress tolerance as a mediator and negative urgency as a moderator in the relationship between childhood maltreatment severity and three alcohol-related outcomes: consumption, consequences, and cumulative risk.

Greater childhood maltreatment severity was associated with lower distress tolerance and higher alcohol-related risk and consequences. Distress tolerance did not mediate the association between maltreatment severity and alcohol outcomes. However, alternative models indicated that maltreatment severity mediated the association between distress tolerance and alcohol-related consequences, and this indirect effect was consistent across levels of negative urgency.

Findings highlight the importance of assessing childhood maltreatment histories to identify women at elevated alcohol-related risk and advance gender-informed prevention and intervention efforts.