- Title
- An Association Between Psychological Childbirth Trauma and Hazardous Alcohol Use
- Creator
- Doherty, Michelle; Hunt, Sally A.
- Relation
- International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction Vol. 21, Issue 8 March 2022
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11469-022-00784-3
- Publisher
- Springer
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Hazardous alcohol use is increasing amongst some groups of women, yet little is known about the underlying reasons or gender-specific influences. The purpose of this study was to explore the association between psychological childbirth trauma and women’s hazardous alcohol use. We aimed to identify predictors of hazardous alcohol use given childbirth-related trauma, other life trauma (combat, natural disasters, physical or sexual assault, experiences threatening loss of life or loss of loved ones) and coping motives for drinking, whilst controlling for age, socio-economic status, negative affect and other drinking motives (enhancement and social motives). Australian data from the Why Women Drink survey (N = 301) was analysed. Women who experienced childbirth as traumatic scored higher overall for hazardous drinking and endorsed coping reasons more strongly than those who did not. Analyses of individual differences affecting hazardous drinking revealed coping reasons, rather than trauma itself, as the strongest predictor in a regression model. Other significant predictors included socio-economic status, enhancement of positive emotions and, marginally, negative affect. Findings identified a link between traumatic childbirth and hazardous drinking as a coping strategy. Prospective research is required to characterise predisposing and perpetuating vulnerabilities determining maladaptive coping after traumatic childbirth, and to inform effective interventions.
- Subject
- alcohol; hazardous drinking; coping motives; childbirth; psychological childbirth trauma; trauma; SDG 5; SDG 11; SDG 16; Sustainable Development Goals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1478019
- Identifier
- uon:50081
- Identifier
- ISSN:1557-1874
- Rights
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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