Binge drinking, gender and clinical depression

* Alcohol consumption and depression have a complicated relationship.
* New findings indicate that depression is primarily related to binge drinking.
* The relationship between major clinical depression and alcohol consumption appears to be stronger for women than it is for men.
* However, men and women do not differ in the relationship between alcohol use and depression when depression is measured as recent feelings of depression or unhappiness.

Although previous research has shown that alcohol consumption and depression are often related, the findings have not been consistent. A new study has found that how researchers measure both alcohol consumption and depression, as well as examination by gender, are key issues when interpreting findings on the relationship between alcohol and depression.

Results are published in the January issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

"Not all studies have found a significant relationship between drinking and depression," said Kathryn Graham, senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, "and some have found a relationship for one gender but not the other. In our study, we included two quite different types of measures of depression. We also used four clearly different types of alcohol consumption measures that examined both drinking pattern as well as overall consumption." Graham is the corresponding author for the study.

"This is an important study of a large national sample of Canadian women and men," added Sharon C. Wilsnack, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences. "It looks at associations between depression and alcohol use separately for women and for men. It is clear from the study's results that it is a mistake to analyze relationships between depression and alcohol consumption without specifying which manifestations of depression are linked to which drinking patterns. And even when multiple measures are used, the connections are more evident among women than among men."

Researchers conducted a general population telephone survey of 6,009 males and 8,054 females aged 18 to 76 years. The study included four types of alcohol measures given for both the past year and the week prior to the survey: frequency of drinking, usual and maximum quantity per occasion, overall volume, and heavy episodic drinking; and two types of depression measures: meeting criteria for a clinical diagnosis of major depression, and recent depressed feelings.

Results indicate that measurement and gender are key issues in interpreting findings on the relationship between alcohol and depression. Specifically, depression is primarily related to drinking larger quantities per occasion, is unrelated to drinking frequency, and these effect are stronger for women than for men.

"Depression is most strongly related to a pattern of binge drinking," said Graham. "A pattern of frequent but low quantity drinking is not associated with depression. In fact, those who usually drink less than two drinks per occasion and never drink as much as five drinks are less depressed – for both measures of depression – than former drinkers. This relationship with drinking pattern is greater for women than for men."