Alcohol involvement and dysphoria: a longitudinal examination of gender differences from late adolescence to adulthood.

Although numerous investigations have examined the relations between alcoholism and depression, differing results have emerged. Major limitations in existing work are that it uses clinical samples and is cross-sectional in nature. Using prospective data from a community sample assessed during 3 developmental periods (late adolescence, young adulthood, and adulthood), these complex relations were examined with structural equation modeling. Results show distinct gender differences between alcohol involvement and dysphoria. For women these 2 processes were related from late adolescence to adulthood, and this relation was reflected in a higher order construct that was stable over time. For men alcohol involvement and dysphoria were unrelated during late adolescence but converged over time. Reciprocal relations between alcohol involvement and dysphoria were found for both men and women.