World Health Organization Risk Drinking Levels Among Mandated College Students: Associations with Alcohol Use, Mental Health, and Academic Performance.

OBJECTIVE: World Health Organization (WHO) risk drinking levels (i.e., low, moderate, high, or very high risk) have been used as a drinking reduction endpoint in clinical trials. Yet, prior work has not attempted to quantify reductions in WHO risk levels among mandated students, who may also benefit from reduced drinking. We sought to validate WHO risk drinking levels in differentiating students' alcohol-related outcomes, depressive symptoms, and academic performance. Defining risk via typical drinks per drinking day versus drinks per day was compared, and gender differences were examined. METHOD: Baseline data were drawn from three intervention trials for students mandated to intervention and who were not abstinent (N=1436). Sex-specific WHO risk levels were generated and dummy coded, with low risk as the reference. Regression models examined associations of risk levels with positive AUDIT scores, peak drinking, consequences, depressive symptoms, and grade point average. RESULTS: Defining WHO risk via drinks per drinking day evenly dispersed students across categories, whereas drinks per day categorized most as low risk. More women than men were classified as very high risk across definitions. Students classified as low risk differed from those classified as moderate, high, and very high risk in screening positive on the AUDIT, peak drinking, and consequences. WHO risk levels did not differentiate depressive symptoms. Differences in grade point average were inconsistent across risk definitions. CONCLUSIONS: WHO risk drinking levels differentiated alcohol use and consequences and, therefore, hold promise for clinical use and for quantifying drinking reductions among mandated college students.

Community-level age bias and older adult mortality.

RATIONALE: As the older adult population increases, understanding the health effects of bias against older adults is increasingly important. Whether structural forms of age bias predict worse health has received limited attention. OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that communities with greater age bias would have higher mortality among residents aged 65 and older. We expected the association to be unique to age bias, rather than general bias (i.e., sexual minority and racial bias), and that the age bias-mortality association would be strongest in predominantly White and younger communities. METHODS: Explicit and implicit attitudes toward older adults (N = 1,001,735), sexual minorities (N = 791,966), and Black Americans (N = 2,255,808) were drawn from Project Implicit. Post-stratification relative to U.S. Census demographics was executed to improve the representativeness of county-level explicit and implicit bias estimates. County older adult mortality, estimated cross-sectionally with and longitudinally relative to bias scores, served as outcomes. Models controlled for relevant county-level covariates (e.g., median age) and included all U.S. counties (N = 3142). RESULTS: Contrary to hypotheses but consistent with prior work, explicit age bias was cross-sectionally and longitudinally associated with lower mortality, over and above covariates and generalized community bias. The explicit age bias-lower mortality association only emerged in younger counties but did not depend on county ethnic composition. Implicit age bias was unassociated with outcomes. Post-hoc analyses supported that ageist communities may be associated with better health across the lifespan. Explicit age bias predicted lower mortality in young and middle adulthood; better mental health in middle adulthood, but not exercise or self-rated health, mediated the explicit age bias-older adult mortality association. CONCLUSIONS: Results highlight the uniqueness of older age relative to other stigmatized identities. Further examination of the association of community-level age bias with better health may improve longevity for all communities.

Testing the Influence of Brooding and Anger Rumination on the Association Between Suicidal Outcomes and BPD Features in Undergraduate Students.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms and suicidal behaviors are prevalent among undergraduate students. Although rumination contributes to self-destructive behaviors in BPD, less research examines the role of rumination in distinct suicidal outcomes among individuals with BPD features instead focusing more on self-destructive behaviors as a latent variable. The present study examined the main and interactive effects of BPD features and two forms of rumination (brooding and anger) in the prediction of suicide-related outcomes (ideation and attempts) among college students. Participants (N = 181 undergraduate students, overrecruited for BPD features; 55.2% female) reported their lifetime suicide risk, brooding rumination, anger rumination, and BPD features. Brooding rumination and BPD features were associated with suicidal ideation. Anger rumination was not associated with suicide-related outcomes. Findings suggest that brooding rumination is a potential intervention target for suicidal ideation in undergraduate students whereas further research is required to determine the association between anger rumination and suicidal ideation and attempts.

Whose Outcomes Come Out? Patterns of Caregiver- and Youth-reported Outcomes Based on Caregiver-youth Baseline Discrepancies.

OBJECTIVE: Discrepancies between caregiver and youth reports of emotional and behavioral symptoms are well-documented, with cross-informant correlations often falling in the low to moderate range. Studies have shown that caregiver-youth (dis)agreement in reporting of youth symptoms is related to treatment outcomes. However, commonly used methods for exploring reporter discrepancies (e.g., difference scores) are limited by their inability to assess discrepancies across multiple symptom domains simultaneously, and thus these previous findings do not explore multiple patterns of (dis)agreement. METHOD: We used latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify subgroups of clinically referred youths based on patterns of caregiver- and youth-reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms for 174 caregiver-youth dyads. Longitudinal multilevel models were used to examine changes in weekly caregiver- and youth-reported internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and top problems for identified subgroups. RESULTS: The LPA identified four latent subgroups: (a) Caregiver Internalizing (9%), (b) Caregiver Internalizing-Externalizing (45%), (c) Youth Internalizing (7%), and (d) Caregiver-Youth Internalizing-Externalizing (39%). Clinical outcomes varied across informants and subgroups. Significant improvements in caregiver- and youth-reported outcome measures were documented within the Caregiver Internalizing, Caregiver Internalizing-Externalizing, and Caregiver-Youth Internalizing-Externalizing subgroups. However, only youth-reported improvements were detected in the Youth Internalizing subgroup. The results show differences in treatment outcomes across caregiver-youth informant subgroups. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest how youth and caregiver baseline data could provide guidance for clinicians in interpreting discrepant reporting and its relevance to change during treatment.