Associations between Shyness and Victimization with Substance Use Outcomes in the National Comorbidity and Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiological Surveys.

Background: There is a lack of consensus among researchers on the association between shyness and substance use. This may be due to unexamined modifiers of this association, such as childhood victimization. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine if experiencing different types of victimization (emotional, physical, sexual, and poly-victimization) modifies the association between shyness and substance use outcomes in adults. In this study, we performed moderation analyses to investigate whether victimization moderates the association between shyness and substance use/abuse. Data came from the National Comorbidity Survey Baseline (NCS-1; 1990-1992) and the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiological Surveys (CPES; 2001-2003). Substance use outcomes included were binge drinking, tobacco use, other drug use, and DSM-III-R (NCS-1)/DSM-IV (CPES) classifications of alcohol and drug abuse. Results: Results from NCS-1 supported a moderating role of childhood victimization on the relationship between shyness and tobacco use only, specifically for emotional (p = .031) and physical (p < .001) victimization, and poly-victimization (p < .001). Results from CPES showed a moderating role of lifetime sexual abuse for binge drinking (p = .017), other drug use (p = .028), and alcohol abuse (p = .004). For both datasets, the associations between shyness and substance use outcomes were stronger when there were no victimization histories. Conclusion: These findings give insight on the complexity of the interaction between shyness and victimization. Future research could focus on mechanisms, such as cognitive processes, that may contribute to interactions between shyness and victimization history on substance outcomes.

Long working hours and depressive symptoms: moderating effects of gender, socioeconomic status, and job resources.

PURPOSE: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have found inconsistent associations between working hours and depressive symptoms. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible moderators of this association, using data from a large-scale cross-sectional survey. METHODS: A total of 16,136 Japanese employees (men 83.5%; women 16.5%) responded to a self-administered questionnaire inquiring about overtime working hours during the previous month and depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale), as well as moderating factors including gender, age, marital status, socioeconomic status, commuting time, sleeping hours per day, job control and worksite social support (Job Content Questionnaire), neuroticism (Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire Revised), and social desirability (Social Desirability Scale) (response rate, 85%). We conducted sequential regression analyses to investigate the main effects and interaction effects of all moderating variables. RESULTS: The association between overtime working hours and depressive symptoms was significantly moderated by gender (interaction effect: ß = 0.03), age (ß = - 0.02), manager (ß = 0.03), sleeping hours (ß = - 0.02), job control (ß = - 0.03), and neuroticism (ß = 0.02). Among workers engaged in 80 + hours of overtime, higher depressive symptoms were reported by women, younger employees, non-managers, employees with low job control, low worksite social support, and high neuroticism. A significant main effect of long overtime working hours on depressive symptoms was also observed even after controlling for all independent variables (ß = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Long overtime working hours is associated with depressive symptoms. We also found significant heterogeneity in the association according to employee characteristics, which may explain the inconsistent findings in previous literature.