One might dismiss the spike as attributable to the stresses of the pandemic, except that women’s high-risk drinking was increasing rapidly before then, too. Men born in the early 1900s were three times as likely as women to drink in problematic ways; today, women are almost as likely as men to do so. While alcohol increases the risk of developing mental health conditions for men and women, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) notes that women are more susceptible to mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, due to both biological and psychosocial factors. A study on stress-related alcohol use also found that women are more likely to drink in times of stress than men. With these factors added up, alcohol can cause greater mental health impacts in women vs men.
Health Implications of Gender-Specific Stress Responses
- The sample comprised individuals who had had some outpatient health care within the prior 3 years and was comparable to similar-age community samples with regard to such health characteristics as prevalence of chronic illness and hospitalization.
- It is also possible that, in participants’ recollections, exposure and reactivity are not as distinct as implied here.
- Consistent with hypotheses, women reported and expressed greater sad and anxious emotion than men following stress, even though they experienced equal (for HR, SBP) or lower (for DBP) physiological arousal than men.
- But what if you didn’t need the alcohol, because child care was ubiquitous and affordable, health care was cheap, and gender norms were more balanced?
- While alcohol may be biased, quitting or cutting back on alcohol isn’t — it’s for anyone and everyone.
Men’s problem-focused approach might be more effective for addressing acute stressors but may fall short in dealing with ongoing or complex stressors that don’t have clear solutions. At a glance, the main differences between men and women in stress experiences are multifaceted. Women tend to report higher levels of stress and are more likely to experience stress-related physical and mental health issues. On the other hand, men often internalize stress, leading to different manifestations of stress-related problems. These differences are not merely anecdotal but are rooted in complex biological, psychological, and social factors. Longitudinal model predicting young adult negative consequences of drinking and binge drinking.
Alcohol-Cue Condition
Males typically feel the effects of alcohol more slowly due to larger body size and greater fluid volume. It’s also important to note that the CDC’s moderate consumption guidelines refer to standard drinks. A cocktail we order at the bar or a beverage we buy at the store may not always be equal to one standard drink.
- If replicated in other studies, the link between normative stress and social motives may require a reconceptualization of social motives.
- “We study impaired control over drinking which is intending to limit to one or two alcoholic beverages per social event, but some individuals can stop after one or two drinks and some can not,” Patock-Peckham says.
- In contrast, gender differences in drinking reactivity among problem drinkers were negligible.
- This finding was unexpected as other studies have shown stronger associations among stress, coping motives, and alcohol use for women than for men (Peltier et al., 2019).
- This kind of binge drinking can lead some down a path toward alcohol use disorder, a condition characterized by uncontrolled drinking and preoccupation with alcohol.
‘Men’s drinking is more forgivable’: Why it’s harder for women to give up alcohol
Because of our interest in drinking behavior, abstainers and infrequent drinkers were excluded from recruitment into the study. Consequently, the proportion of problem drinkers in this sample is higher than in general community samples (Brennan et al., 1999). Informed consent was obtained from all participants; additional details about initial recruitment are available elsewhere (Brennan and Moos, 1990; Moos et al., 1990). What works for one gender may not be as effective for the other, and individual variations within genders are significant.
Men and women’s different responses to stress may have implications for the known divergences between men and women in vulnerability for stress-related disorders. Women’s focus on sadness and anxiety may lead to risk for depression and anxiety, disorders which are more common in women than men. Men’s stronger integration between negative emotion and craving may contribute to risk for the development of alcohol-use disorders, disorders which are more common for men than women. If this is true, it would have implications for the prevention and treatment of depression/anxiety and alcohol-use disorders. Treatment of anxiety and depression in women may benefit from addressing the tendency to ruminate on sad/anxious feelings. And, treatment of men might focus on encouraging men to cope with stress and negative emotions in ways other than substance use.
This heightened activation can lead to a more intense and prolonged stress response in women. Conversely, testosterone in men can have a stress-buffering effect, potentially explaining why men might appear less reactive to stress in certain situations. Women who experienced stress drank heavily regardless of if their first drink contained alcohol or not. Men whose first drink contained alcohol and who then experienced stress drank more than men who received the alcohol-free drink. After that, all participants were allowed to drink however much they wanted (up to a certain BAC limit) for 90 minutes. Participants were encouraged to moderate their drinking to only one alcoholic drink per hour, buttressed by financial incentives (participants who stuck to one alcoholic drink per hour would get more money at the end than those who didn’t).
Alcohol consumption
Some participants’ first drink contained roughly three times the amount of alcohol you would typically find in a drink. Others didn’t get any alcohol, though the rim of their glass was doused with a negligible amount of booze — a trick designed to make these participants unsure if they were drinking alcohol or not. The holiday season is in full swing, and for many, getting into the holiday spirit means consuming plenty of spirits. Between the pandemic and alcohol’s starring role in many social settings, you may be imbibing more regardless of whether you’re staying home or spreading holiday cheer (and hopefully not Covid-19).
Women and men are at risk for different types of stress-related disorders, with women at greater risk for depression and anxiety and men at greater risk for alcohol- use disorders (Kajantie and Phillips, 2005; Kessler et al., 1993). Overall implications of these findings highlight the importance of considering gender differences in the relationship between depressive symptoms and CDM. Clinical implications relate to the importance of tailoring intervention programs to target psychosocial factors that increase risk for heavy drinking.
In the overall sample, men were more likely than women to report exposure to peers’ drinking and to workplace problems but less likely than women to experience a stress drinking has a gender divide partner’s drinking, family interpersonal problems, death of someone close, and emotional distress (Table 1). Men and women were comparable to one another in their levels of exposure to financial or legal problems and to health problems. We used chi-square analyses to compare women and men on their exposure (the proportion of individuals who experienced the situation) and drinking reactivity (the proportion who drank more among those who experienced the situation).
Longitudinal Effects of Adolescent Drunkenness
Cross-sectional model predicting young adult negative consequences of drinking and binge drinking. Women may be more likely to label the same or lower physiological arousal as sadness/anxiety related than men or may experience it subjectively and express it behaviorally with greater intensity. Women may also focus cognitively on sadness/anxiety more than men—-for example, women are more likely to ruminate on sad and anxious emotions than men whereas men are more likely to distract attention away from these emotional states (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 1999). Rumination has been linked to depressive and anxious symptoms, symptoms which are more common for women than men (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000). Alternatively, as hypothesized by Taylor et al. (2000), it may be that cardiovascular arousal and the traditional “fight” or “flight” response is not a prominent domain of stress experience for women. Studies of subjective emotion experience find that women report greater sadness (Brebner, 2003; Fischer et al., 2004) and anxiety/fear (Feingold, 1994; Fischer et al., 2004; Ollendick et al., 1995) than men.