Research Review

Study: Relationship Between Drinking, PTSD Symptoms in College Students

The estimated 9% of college students who have PTSD symptoms are likely to drink more alcohol than peers without the psychological condition. In turn, heavy alcohol consumption exacerbates PTSD symptoms over time, prolonging a vicious cycle.

These are the conclusions of the first empirical study to examine the bidirectional influences of the two phenomena, influences that had been theorized but never tested. The study, “Reciprocal Associations Between PTSD Symptoms and Alcohol Involvement in College: A Three-Year Trait-State-Error Analysis,” was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and is published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

The study employed the trait-state-error modeling analytic approach, which allowed the examination of prospective and reciprocal associations among these constructs while accounting for intra-individual stability.

“College is a time of important developmental changes and a period of risk for heavy drinking, trauma exposure, and posttraumatic stress symptoms,” says Jennifer P. Read, PhD, associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo and principle investigator on the study.

“Heavy drinking is common on college campuses and related to risk for sexual assault, interpersonal violence, and serious injury, any of which may trigger PTSD,” says Read, who noted that although there has been an assumption that the two are mechanistically associated in the college population, until now, the nature of their relationship was unclear.

The study examined the relationships between PTSD and heavy drinking in 486 students as they transitioned into college and at 11 additional points over the following three years.

“We show that alcohol use and associated problems are linked over time to an exacerbation in PTSD symptoms, and that PTSD symptoms show a similar effect on alcohol consumption. Each affects the other. As such, both PTSD and heavy drinking are risk factors for one another, each with implications for the other over the course of college,” Read says. “This information is useful and perhaps imperative for those who assist students dealing with these problems.”

— Source: University at Buffalo