Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA.
Department of Complex Trait Genetics, Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Subst Use Misuse. 2023;58(11):1377-1387. doi: 10.1080/10826084.2023.2223269. Epub 2023 Jun 20.
Drinking motives are strong proximal predictors of alcohol use behaviors and may represent a mediational mechanism by which different individual predispositions toward internalizing or externalizing psychopathology lead to the development of alcohol misuse. However, whether the association is due to a causal relationship or a shared etiology (i.e., confounding) is difficult to determine and may change across developmental periods. This study leveraged a cross-lagged panel design to disentangle the nature of the relationships between self-report measures of drinking motives, alcohol misuse, and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in a 4-year longitudinal sample of college students ( = 9,889). Results pointed to a putative causal effect of drinking motives on early binge drinking frequency, but the direction of effect later reversed, reflecting a possible developmental shift during college. On the other hand, the relationships between drinking motives and internalizing/externalizing psychopathology appeared to be driven by shared etiology rather than direct causal mechanisms. These findings highlight the distinct and important role of drinking motives in the etiology of alcohol misuse and have implications for the application of tailored prevention and treatment strategies.
饮酒动机是饮酒行为的强近因预测因子，可能代表了一种中介机制，通过这种机制，个体内部化或外部化精神病理学的不同倾向导致了酒精滥用的发展。然而，这种关联是由于因果关系还是共同的病因（即混杂）很难确定，并且可能在不同的发展阶段发生变化。本研究利用交叉滞后面板设计，在大学生的 4 年纵向样本中（ = 9889），分离了饮酒动机、酒精滥用以及内化和外化精神病理学之间的自我报告测量之间关系的本质。结果表明，饮酒动机对早期 binge drinking 频率有潜在的因果影响，但后来这种影响的方向发生了逆转，反映了大学期间可能发生的发展转变。另一方面，饮酒动机与内化/外化精神病理学之间的关系似乎是由共同的病因驱动的，而不是直接的因果机制。这些发现突出了饮酒动机在酒精滥用病因学中的独特和重要作用，对量身定制的预防和治疗策略的应用具有启示意义。
