Researchers conducted a general population telephone survey of 6,009 males and 8,054 females aged 18 to 76 years. The study included four types of alcohol measures given for both the past year and the week prior to the survey: frequency of drinking, usual and maximum quantity per occasion, overall volume, and heavy episodic drinking; and two types of depression measures: meeting criteria for a clinical diagnosis of major depression, and recent depressed feelings.
Results indicate that measurement and gender are key issues in interpreting findings on the relationship between alcohol and depression. Specifically, depression is primarily related to drinking larger quantities per occasion, is unrelated to drinking frequency, and these effect are stronger for women than for men.
"Depression is most strongly related to a pattern of binge drinking," said Graham. "A pattern of frequent but low quantity drinking is not associated with depression. In fact, those who usually drink less than two drinks per occasion and never drink as much as five drinks are less depressed for both measures of depression than former drinkers. This relationship with drinking pattern is greater for women than for men."
Second, the overall relationship between depression and alcohol consumption is stronger for women than for men, but only when depression is measured as meeting a clinical diagnosis of major depression. Conversely, there is no gender difference when depression is measured as recent depressed feelings, which is commonly done in research on this topic.
"This pattern of associations is more consistent with women using alcohol to counteract depression by high-quantity drinking and intoxication than with chronic alcohol consumption tending t
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3-Jan-2007