Drinking to Cope is Uniquely Associated with Less Specific and Bleaker Future Goal Generation in Young Hazardous Drinkers.

ABSTRACT: Groups with mental health and/or substance use problems generate less detailed descriptions of their future goals. As substance use to cope with negative affect is common to both groups, this characteristic might be uniquely associated with less specific goal descriptions. To test this prediction, 229 past year hazardous drinking undergraduates aged 18-25 years wrote about three positive future life goals in an open-ended survey, before reporting their internalizing (anxiety and depression) symptoms, alcohol dependence severity and motivations for drinking: coping, conformity, enhancement and social. Future goal descriptions were experimenter-rated for detail specificity, and participant-self-rated for positivity, vividness, achievability, and importance. Effort in goal writing was indexed

SUBMITTER: Shuai R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10198914 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature