The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic experiences on college drinking via mental distress: Cross-sectional mediation moderated by race.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has been linked to stress, anxiety, and depression among college students, with heightened distress tied to greater drinking for some individuals. Emerging research suggests that these associations may differ across race, but few studies use adequate samples to examine this, particularly among college students, an at-risk population for both heavy drinking and mental distress. Specifically, pandemic-related stressors and mental distress may be higher among Black students than White students. The current study examined: (1) whether mental distress cross-sectionally mediates the association between pandemic-specific stressors and drinking and (2) whether race (Black or White) moderates these associations. METHODS: A cross-sectional online survey of 400 college drinkers (43% White, 28% Black) in fall 2020 assessed pandemic-related stressors (e.g., losing a job, contracting COVID-19, changed living situation), mental distress (stress, anxiety, depression), and drinking (past-month drinking, perceived changes since the start of the pandemic). RESULTS: Cross-sectional mediation models indicated that financial stressors and social distancing were linked to greater quantity and frequency of past-month drinking through greater mental distress. For perceived changes in drinking, only financial stressors were linked to drinking greater quantities and drinking more often (compared to pre-pandemic levels) via mental distress. Moderated mediation models among students identifying as White or Black revealed that changed living situation was a robust stressor across race. Financial stressors and social distancing were linked with greater distress only among White students, whereas essential worker status was a protective factor against distress only among Black students. CONCLUSIONS: Select stressors were linked to increased drinking through greater mental distress, with differential risks across Black versus White students. Findings suggest campus administrators should focus on connecting students with resources (e.g., counseling centers and health promotion offices) during times of distress.

Differential Pathways of Risky Drinking via Coping Motives in College and Noncollege Young Adults.

The current study tested a mediation model of psychological functioning (i.e., perceived stressors, psychological distress, and self-regulation) and risky drinking through a drinking to cope pathway comparing college and noncollege young adults. Participants were 623 young adult drinkers (M age = 21.46) who completed an online survey. Multigroup analyses examined the proposed mediation model for college students and nonstudents. For nonstudents, the indirect effects of psychological distress to alcohol use outcomes (i.e., alcohol quantity, binge drinking frequency, and alcohol-related problems) via coping motives was significant. Further, coping motives significantly mediated the positive effects of self-regulation on alcohol quantity, binge drinking frequency, and alcohol-related problems. For students, greater psychological distress was associated with greater coping motives, which in turn, related to greater alcohol-related problems. Coping motives significantly mediated the positive effect of self-regulation on binge drinking frequency. Findings highlight the different pathways that may result in risky drinking and alcohol problems based on young adult's educational attainment. These results have important clinical implications, particularly for those who have not attended college.

Social network moderators of brief alcohol intervention impact.

OBJECTIVE: This investigation examined the impact of social networks on drinking reduction efforts following a brief alcohol intervention. In a reanalysis of data from an earlier randomized controlled trial with nonstudent emerging adult drinkers (Lau-Barraco et al., 2018), we aimed to test three domains of preintervention social network features as potential factors influencing intervention response: (a) general network characteristics (i.e., network size, network stability), (b) general network alcohol use (i.e., network alcohol abstainers, network heavy/problem drinkers), and (c) risky peers in network (i.e., proportion of drinking buddies, presence of drinking buddies identified as heavy/problem drinker). METHOD: Participants were 164 emerging adult heavy drinkers recruited from the community (65.9% men; mean age = 21.98 years; 56.2% ethnic minority). Participants were randomly assigned to either a brief personalized feedback intervention (PFI) or assessment-only control and provided data at 1-month and 3-month follow-ups. RESULTS: Greater network stability and greater representation of alcohol abstainers in one's social network were associated with improved initial postintervention response. Heavy/problem drinkers in the network did not moderate initial postintervention effects on drinking outcomes, but there was potentially a stronger intervention effect on risk reduction for those with higher proportions of drinking buddies in their network. CONCLUSIONS: Study findings provided evidence that a PFI was efficacious in mitigating some risky social network influence. However, findings did not support a consistent impact across all the network variables examined. Future research is needed to further clarify social network influences and how they may be targeted to enhance intervention efficacy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Minority stress and alcohol use in sexual minority women's daily lives.

Sexual minority women (i.e., women who identify as lesbian, bisexual, or other non-heterosexual orientations) report more hazardous drinking compared to heterosexual women. Sexual minority stress (SMS), or experiences related to sexual orientation-based discrimination and marginalization, have been implicated as contributing to these disparities. The association between sexual minority stress and alcohol use has been supported in cross-sectional, and to a limited extent, longitudinal studies. Few studies, however, have examined associations between SMS and alcohol use in sexual minority women's daily lives. Young sexual minority women (age 18-35; N = 321) were recruited to participate in a 14-day daily diary study in which they reported each morning on their SMS and alcohol use (drinking or not; drinking quantity; alcohol consequences) from the previous day. SMS was operationalized in four ways (global negative SMS experiences, specific SMS events, concealment of identity, discrimination). Results from concurrent multilevel models revealed that on days when sexual minority women experienced more global negative SMS, any specific SMS event, or discrimination, they were more likely to drink. Further, prospective models indicated that participants drank more and were more likely to report binge drinking on the day after they experienced at least one SMS event. These findings extend prior research by demonstrating that the association between SMS and alcohol use extends to the daily level of analysis among sexual minority women. Understanding the connection between SMS and alcohol use among sexual minority women is imperative to developing culturally tailored interventions to improve the health and well-being of this at-risk group. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Idiopathic Adulthood Ductopenia Causing Cirrhosis.

Idiopathic adulthood ductopenia (IAD) is a chronic small duct cholestatic biliary disease that is characterized by the loss of interlobular bile ducts. It is diagnosed when there is biochemical evidence of cholestatic liver disease, ductopenia on liver biopsy, and no other identifiable cause of cholestasis. We present a patient with 10 days of progressive abdominal pain, jaundice, and worsening liver function tests who advanced to fulminant liver failure with no apparent underlying cause. He was found to have cirrhosis, with biopsy demonstrative of ductopenia, consistent with idiopathic adulthood ductopenia, which is a rare etiology of cirrhosis but should be considered when the typical workup yields no answer.

Adolescent methylmercury exposure alters short-term remembering, but not sustained attention, in male Long-Evans rats.

Methylmercury is an environmental neurotoxicant found in fish that produces behavioral deficits following early developmental exposure. The impact of adolescent exposure to this developmental neurotoxicant is only recently being explored in animal models. Here, short-term memory and sustained attention were examined using a rodent model of adolescent methylmercury exposure. Rats were exposed to 0, 0.5, or 5 ppm methylmercury throughout the adolescent period and tested on a two-choice visual signal detection task in adulthood. Methylmercury improved short-term remembering in this procedure but the dose-effect curve was nonmonotonic, as has been reported previously: effects on memory were observed in animals exposed to 0.5 ppm methylmercury, but not 5 ppm. Methylmercury did not significantly alter sustained attention, which is in contrast to effects following gestational exposure in human populations. The results may suggest that attention is not involved with previously reported effects of methylmercury during adolescence, but certain procedural issues remain unresolved.