Flanagan Julianne C, Jarnecke Amber M, Leone Ruschelle M, Oesterle Daniel W
Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, 67 President St, Charleston, SC 29425, United States; Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center, United States.
Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, 67 President St, Charleston, SC 29425, United States.
Addict Behav. 2020 Oct;109:106474. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2020.106474. Epub 2020 May 21.
Social stress in the form of maladaptive relationship conflict is a common precipitant to alcohol misuse and problems. Research has also established a clear causal association between alcohol misuse and relationship conflict in the form of intimate partner violence (IPV). Despite the robust literature linking relationship conflict and problematic drinking using survey methodology, no laboratory studies have examined the proximal association between relationship conflict and alcohol craving among couples, or the influence of IPV perpetration and victimization on this association.
As part of a larger randomized controlled trial, 30 different-sex community couples with substance misuse completed a laboratory conflict resolution task. Participants reported subjective alcohol craving on a Likert-type scale immediately, before, and after the task. Conflict behaviors were coded by trained observers. Analyses were conducted using a multilevel modeling framework to account for the dyadic nature of the data.
Findings indicate that psychological and physical IPV perpetration and victimization strengthened the associations between negative and positive conflict behaviors and alcohol craving among men only. Contrary to our hypotheses, no main or moderating effects of conflict behaviors, IPV perpetration, or IPV victimization were found for women.
Findings from this exploratory study suggest that in this sample, relationship conflict and IPV in one's current relationship played a more impactful role on acute alcohol craving among men compared to women. Future studies should examine the role of specific conflict behaviors on alcohol craving and relapse risk, and patterns of communication that might increase or reduce risk for exacerbated alcohol craving.
适应不良的关系冲突形式的社会压力是酒精滥用及问题的常见诱因。研究还明确了酒精滥用与亲密伴侣暴力（IPV）形式的关系冲突之间存在因果关联。尽管有大量文献使用调查方法将关系冲突与问题饮酒联系起来，但尚无实验室研究考察情侣间关系冲突与酒精渴望之间的近端关联，或IPV perpetration和受害情况对这种关联的影响。
作为一项更大规模随机对照试验的一部分，30对有物质滥用问题的不同性别的社区情侣完成了一项实验室冲突解决任务。参与者在任务前、任务中和任务后立即用李克特量表报告主观酒精渴望程度。冲突行为由训练有素的观察员进行编码。采用多层次建模框架进行分析，以考虑数据的二元性质。
研究结果表明，心理和身体上的IPV perpetration和受害情况仅在男性中加强了负面和正面冲突行为与酒精渴望之间的关联。与我们的假设相反，未发现冲突行为、IPV perpetration或IPV受害情况对女性有主要或调节作用。
这项探索性研究的结果表明，在这个样本中，与女性相比，当前关系中的关系冲突和IPV对男性急性酒精渴望的影响更大。未来的研究应考察特定冲突行为对酒精渴望和复发风险的作用，以及可能增加或降低酒精渴望加剧风险的沟通模式。
