The Indirect Effect of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms on Current Alcohol Use Through Negative Cognitions in Sexual Minority Men
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Self-medication theory posits that some trauma survivors use alcohol to cope with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, but the role of negative posttraumatic cognitions in this relationship is not well defined. We examined associations among PTSD symptoms, posttraumatic cognitions, and alcohol intoxication frequency in 290 men who have sex with men (MSM), who reported a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Using a bootstrap approach, we examined the indirect effects of PTSD symptoms on alcohol intoxication frequency through posttraumatic cognitions regarding the self, world, and self-blame. In separate regression models, higher levels of PTSD symptoms and posttraumatic cognitions were each associated with more frequent intoxication, accounting for 2.6% and 5.2% of the variance above demographics, respectively. When examined simultaneously, posttraumatic cognitions remained significantly correlated with intoxication frequency whereas PTSD symptoms did not. Men reporting elevated posttraumatic cognitions faced increased odds for current alcohol dependence, odds ratio (OR) = 2.19, 95% CI [1.13, 4.22], compared with men reporting low posttraumatic cognitions, independent of current PTSD diagnosis. A higher level of PTSD symptom severity was indirectly associated with more frequent alcohol intoxication through cognitions about the self and world; the indirect to total effect ratios were 0.74 and 0.35, respectively. Negative posttraumatic cognitions pertaining to individuals' self-perceptions and appraisals of the world as dangerous may play a role in self-medication with alcohol among MSM with a history of CSA. Interventions targeting these cognitions may offer potential for reducing alcohol misuse in this population, with possible broader implications for HIV-infection risk.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".