Drinking to Cope With Depressive Symptoms and Ruminative Thinking: A Multiple Mediation Model Among College Students

ABSTRACTBackground: Understanding the potential psychosocial mechanisms that explain (i.e., mediate) the associations between depressive symptoms and alcohol-related problems can improve interventions targeting college students. Objectives: The current research examined four distinct facets of rumination (e.g., problem-focused thoughts, counterfactual thinking, repetitive thoughts, and anticipatory thoughts) and drinking to cope motives as potential explanatory mechanisms by which depressive symptoms are associated with increased alcohol-related problems. Method: Participants were undergraduate students from a large, southeastern university in the United States that consumed at least one drink per typical week in the previous month (n = 403). The majority of participants were female (n = 291; 72.2%), identified as being either White, non-Hispanic (n = 210; 52.1%), or African American (n = 110; 27.3%), and reported a mean age of 21.92 (SD = 5.75) years. Results: Structural equation modeling was conducted e...