title: Hazardous drinking, depression, and anxiety among sexual-minority women: self-medication or impaired functioning?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Sexual-minority women are at heightened risk for a number of mental health problems, including hazardous alcohol consumption, depression, and anxiety. We examined self-medication and impaired-functioning models of the associations among these variables and interpreted results within a life course framework that considered the unique social stressors experienced by sexual-minority women.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data were from a sample of 384 women interviewed during the first two waves of the Chicago Health and Life Experiences of Women (CHLEW) study.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Covariance structure modeling revealed that (a) consistent with a self-medication process, anxiety was prospectively associated with hazardous drinking and (b) consistent with an impaired-functioning process, hazardous drinking was prospectively associated with depression.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings support a life course perspective that interprets the mental health of adult sexual-minority women as influenced by adverse childhood experiences, age at drinking onset, first heterosexual intercourse, and first sexual identity disclosure, as well as by processes associated with self-medication and impaired functioning during adulthood.
authors.affiliation: Survey Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607, USA. timj@uic.edu
authors.forename: Timothy P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Tonda L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Hughes
authors.forename: Young Ik
authors.initials: YI
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Sharon C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Wilsnack
authors.forename: Frances
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Aranda
authors.forename: Laura A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Szalacha
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D017668:Age of Onset; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D019973:Alcohol-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology; D001007:Anxiety / Q000453:epidemiology*; D001727:Bisexuality / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003625:Data Collection; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012651:Self Medication / Q000706:statistics & numerical data