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Posttraumatic Stress and Problem Drinking at the Transition Out of College

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Abstract

The objective of the present study was to examine how symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may confer drinking risk as students with trauma histories complete college and move toward independent adulthood. Students (N = 283) completed assessments of trauma, posttraumatic stress, and alcohol use and consequences at four time points during the year following their fourth year of college. Some students had transitioned out of the college environment, whereas others had not. We examined how transition status moderated within-person associations between changes in PTSD and corresponding changes in alcohol outcomes over time. Using multilevel modeling, we examined differences in within-person PTSD-alcohol associations comparing students who were (1) continuing as fifth-year seniors, (2) graduated and pursuing graduate education, and (3) graduated and left the university setting. Alcohol use and consequences tended to decline on average from the fourth to fifth year post-matriculation. Yet, within-person increases in posttraumatic stress symptomatology across the fifth year were associated with greater alcohol consequences, but only for those students who had left the university setting. These data suggest that the transition out of college may be an important developmental context that is associated with increased vulnerability for negative consequences from stress-related drinking. Findings may have important implications for campus-based prevention efforts geared toward the facilitation of a successful transition into independent adulthood.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA018993) to Dr. Jennifer P. Read.

We would like to thank Drs. Jackie White, Paige Ouimette, Craig Colder, Ashlyn Swartout, Sherry Farrow, and Jennifer Merrill for their myriad contributions to this project. We also thank the members of the UB Alcohol Research Lab for their many efforts to support data collection for this study and the participants for sharing their experiences.

The TLEQ was used with permission from WPS. Copyright © 2004 by Western Psychological Services. WPS, 12031 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90025, U.S.A, Format adapted by J. Read, SUNY at Buffalo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    Jennifer P. Read & Sharon Radomski

  2. Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Canada

    Jeffrey D. Wardell

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  1. Jennifer P. Read
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  2. Sharon Radomski
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Correspondence to Jennifer P. Read.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This includes those pertaining to academic, personal, or political relationships; employment; consultancies or honoraria, or financial connections.

Funding

This paper is an original empirical study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA018993: Read, PI).

Ethical Approval

As noted, this study was approved by the University at Buffalo, SUNY IRB. Participants’ right to privacy was not infringed. The manuscript contains no identifying participant information. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed Consent

As noted in the “Method” section, in collecting data for this paper, we followed APA ethical guidelines. Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Read, J.P., Radomski, S. & Wardell, J.D. Posttraumatic Stress and Problem Drinking at the Transition Out of College. Prev Sci 18, 440–449 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-017-0778-0

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