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Abstract
It is well known that many individuals with anxiety and mood disorders also experience alcohol use problems (and vice versa). Yet it is unclear when, how and why these problems occur together. The proposed research will investigate these questions among Australian adolescents.
Study one and two examine data collected as part of the 2007 Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing. Study one investigates the impact of early onset anxiety disorders on age of first use of alcohol, while study two investigates the impact of early onset mood disorders on first use of alcohol. These studies are the first epidemiological investigations to model the impact of early onset anxiety and mood disorders on age of first alcohol use in a general population sample. Early onset anxiety and mood disorders were found to act as unique risk factors for first alcohol use, particularly after the age of 14 years. Significant interactions with developmental timing highlight the need to take into account age when examining the origins of the comorbidity between alcohol use and mood disorders. Different patterns were also observed in relation to individual anxiety and mood disorders.
Study three examines the developmental trajectories of emotional symptoms in a sample of adolescents followed from 13 to 16 years old. Latent class growth analysis uncovered four different trajectories of emotional symptoms. Adolescents whose emotional symptoms remained relatively high-stable across the study period were found to be using alcohol at higher rates at age 16 years, compared to their peers. This is the first time this has been examined in an Australian longitudinal sample.
Study four models the concurrent development of emotional symptoms and alcohol use in a cohort of 1,517 early adolescents over two years. Parallel latent growth modelling investigates whether growth in emotional symptoms is related to growth in alcohol use, and vice versa. Higher initial symptom levels predicted increasing alcohol use frequency. There was no relationship between growth in symptoms, or growth in alcohol use in a large sample of early adolescents from the general population.
These four novel empirical studies make a significant contribution to the current literature, as well as informing prevention and treatment efforts to reduce the considerable burden of disease, social costs and harms associated with comorbidity.