Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
881257 Journal of Adolescence 2009 18 Pages PDF
Abstract

Does adolescent depressed mood portend increased or decreased drinking? Is frequent drinking positively or negatively associated with emotional well-being? Do the dynamic relations between depression and drinking differ by gender? Using block-recursive structural equation models, we explore the reciprocal short-term effects (within time, t) and the cross-lagged medium-term effects (t +1 year) and long-term effects (t + 2 years) of depressed mood and monthly drinking occasions. Data come from the high school waves of the Youth Development Study, a randomly selected panel of 1015 ninth graders followed to 12th grade. We found that for both genders, depressed mood consistently decreased short-term drinking in each grade measured. However, depression increased drinking for both genders in the medium-term but only for girls in the long-term. In the other direction, drinking tended to increase depression in the short-term only among ninth-grade boys and 12th-grade girls. Observed trends and differences in the magnitude of the reciprocal effects vary by gender, with drinking being especially deleterious to emotional well-being for boys early in high school (10th grade) but for girls on the cusp of the post-high school world (12th grade).

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