Stress and Drinking
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 18543
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Behavioral Sciences is requesting empirical manuscripts to undergo the peer-review process for a Special Issue on Stress and Drinking. Julie A. Patock-Peckham serves as the guest editor. We are seeking papers focusing on the psychosocial determinants (traits or environmental influences) of alcohol-use disorders associated with stress and drinking too much. Papers with acute manipulations of stress, novel trait predictors of stress, trauma history, lifetime allostatic load, loneliness, relationships and grief, job loss, family history, immigrant status, and poor sleep quality are welcome. Papers that include impaired control over alcohol-use measures and/or heavy-episodic-drinking measures will be of particular interest. We welcome empirical papers with alcohol self-administration techniques, ecological momentary assessment (EMA), longitudinal data, and novel cross-sectional findings that push the field forward. We would like a group of papers that hit a variety of age groups including adolescents, emerging adults, and middle aged as well as aging adults. Due to gaps in the literature regarding gender health disparities in alcohol self-administration studies, papers with samples with a sufficient ratio of women to men will receive preference for this Special Issue.
Dr. Julie Patock-Peckham
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- stress
- alcohol use disorders
- drinking
- psychosocial determinants
- heavy episodic drinking
- gender
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Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Title: Examining Feasibility and Preliminary Efficacy of a Digital Intervention to Address Stress-related Drinking
Authors: Dongju Seo; Justin Choi; Lisa Goldberg; Rajita Sinha
Affiliation: Yale University School of Medicine
Abstract: Stress significantly impacts alcohol use disorder (AUD), and hazardous drinking alters autonomic function and stress biology to impact the course of the illness and treatment outcomes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in stress-induced alcohol misuse in general population, highlighting an exigent need to develop a novel digital intervention to target stress-related hazardous drinking. To address this, we developed a novel prevention program using telehealth and a smartphone app to treat stress-related drinking and tested its feasibility during the pandemic.
Title: A longitudinal examination of stress, affect dynamics, and alcohol-related outcomes across emerging adulthood
Authors: Stephen Armeli; Richard Feinn; Elise Bragard; Howard Tennen
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Fairleigh Dickinson University, NJ
Department of Medical Sciences, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT
Alcohol Research Center, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, CT
Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, CT
Abstract: Using data from an intensive longitudinal burst design, we examined how affect dynamics were associated with stress, alcohol use, and drinking motives during emerging adulthood. Participants reported their affective states, stress, alcohol use, and drinking motives in 30-day daily diaries in college, and again approximately five and ten years later. At each wave we calculated from the daily data indicators of affect variability, inertia, and positive and negative affect bipolarity. We then examined the stability of these affect dynamics indicators across time and whether changes in these indicators were associated with stress, drinking levels and affect-regulation drinking motives.
Title: Prospective associations among loneliness and health for service members: Perceived helplessness and perceived coping-efficacy as explanatory mechanisms
Authors: Sarah N. Arpin1 Cynthia D. Mohr2 Todd E. Bodner2 Leslie B. Hammer2,3 James D. Lee4
Affiliation: 1Department of Psychology, Gonzaga University
2Depatment of Psychology, Portland State University
3Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences, Oregon Health and Sciences University
4U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral & Social Sciences
Abstract: Loneliness is detrimental to health, contributing to such outcomes as alcohol misuse and sleep disturbance, potentially due in part to elevated levels of perceived stress. Although existing evidence is supportive, these hypothesized relationships have not been explored with military service members, who are particularly at risk for loneliness (Wilson et al., 2018; Strauss et al., 2022), alcohol misuse (Bray et al., 2010), sleep insufficiencies (Farhadian et al. 2022), and psychological distress (Nichter et al., 2020). The current study explores prospective associations among loneliness, stress, and health (i.e., sleep, alcohol misuse, psychological distress) within a sample of N = 276 service members. Further, we explore two dimensions of perceived stress, perceived helplessness and coping efficacy (Taylor, 2015), as explanatory mechanisms through which loneliness is consequential to health over time. Controlling for baseline stress and health outcomes, baseline loneliness predicted perceived helplessness and perceived coping efficacy at a 4-month follow-up. Subsequently, coping efficacy predicted alcohol misuse, and perceived helplessness and coping efficacy predicted greater insomnia and sleep dissatisfaction (i.e., indirect effects). Findings contribute to the current understanding of how loneliness impacts health, extending research to a military sample and revealing potential points of intervention for health consequences of loneliness.
Keywords: loneliness, stress, sleep, alcohol misuse
Title: Moderating Role of Sex in The Relationship Between Anxiety, Depression, and Stress-Induced Alcohol Seeking
Authors: A.C.S. Garrison, J. Hays, J.D. Haines, M. Cox, M. Mlungwana, E. Ragsdale, T. Bravo, A.E.K. Kosobud, D. Kareken, S. O’Connor, M.H. Plawecki, & M.A. Cyders
Affiliation: Indiana University Indianapolis, Department of Psychology, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, USA
Abstract: Sex differences in alcohol use and outcomes have been established. There are also sex differences in stress responsivity, implicating stress as a potential mechanism through which alcohol use may differ between men and women. Stress-related disorders such as depression and anxiety may play a role in these sex differences. This study aims to elucidate the relationship between anxiety, depression, and stress-induced alcohol seeking. Findings indicated a significant relationship between anxiety score and sex in predicting the total number of trials completed to earn alcohol rewards (alcohol seeking) during the stress-induction session (b=22.33, p < 0.05). Post hoc analyses indicated a significant positive relationship between anxiety and alcohol seeking for women (b=14.94, p < 0.05), and a negative relationship between anxiety and alcohol seeking for men which did not reach significance. The interaction between depression score and sex was not found to be significant (b = 6.43, p = 0.14). However, the direction of the relationships mirrored the anxiety results with women showing a nonsignificant positive relationship between depression and alcohol seeking and men showing a nonsignificant negative relationship between depression and alcohol seeking. These results point to a potential role of anxiety and depression symptoms in the differential effects of stress on alcohol seeking among men and women. Further research is needed to clarify these relationships.