Does the Association Between Alcohol Consumption and Depression Depend on How They Are Measured?

Abstract

The results of the present study suggest that measurement and gender are key issues in interpreting findings on the relationship between alcohol and depression. First, depression is primarily related to drinking larger quantities per occasion, less related to volume, and unrelated to drinking frequency, and this effect is stronger for women than for men. Second, the overall relationship between depression and alcohol consumption is stronger for women than for men only when depression is measured as meeting a clinical diagnosis of major depression and not when measured as recent depressed affect. Finally, while there was some evidence that former drinkers had slightly higher rates of major depression and higher scores on recent depressed affect compared with light drinkers, there was no evidence that light drinking was protective for major depression when compared with lifetime abstainers, although light drinkers did report fewer recent symptoms of depressed affect.