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. 2021 Dec 21:15:100402.
doi: 10.1016/j.abrep.2021.100402. eCollection 2022 Jun.

Does insomnia mediate the link between childhood trauma and impaired control over drinking, alcohol use, and related problems?

Sean N Noudali  1 , Julie A Patock-Peckham  1 , Sophia L Berberian  1 , Daniel A Belton  1 , Lyndsay E Campbell  1 , Frank J Infurna  1
Affiliations

Does insomnia mediate the link between childhood trauma and impaired control over drinking, alcohol use, and related problems?

Sean N Noudali et al. Addict Behav Rep. .

Abstract

Introduction: Hyperarousal theory states that stressful negative events can result in a physiological response in the body leading to poor sleep quality. Childhood trauma is associated with many negative health consequences persisting into adulthood such as insomnia. Insomnia itself is a driver of poor physical and psychological health including excessive alcohol use. We examined the direct and indirect relationships between trauma (i.e., physical-neglect, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse) as well as emotionally supportive families on insomnia, impaired control over drinking, alcohol use, and alcohol-related problems.

Methods: We studied a sample of 941 college students (467 women, 474 men). For our data analysis, we used a structural equation model with model indirect commands and 20,000 iteration bootstrapping with asymmetric confidence intervals in Mplus to obtain our mediated effects.

Results: Higher levels of emotional abuse were directly associated with more insomnia. Further, higher levels of physical neglect were directly associated with more impaired control over drinking. We found several mediational pathways from this investigation as well. Higher levels of emotional abuse were indirectly linked to both more alcohol use and alcohol-related problems through increased insomnia and impaired control over drinking.

Conclusions: Our results were consistent with Hyperarousability Theory. We suggest that insomnia may contribute to dysregulated drinking and that combating emotional abuse could be a promising therapeutic target of intervention among college student social drinkers.

Keywords: Alcohol related problems; Alcohol use; Childhood trauma; Impaired control; Sleep problems.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Conceptual model of all examined paths among the exogenous and endogenous variables in the model. Depression was allowed to correlate with all variables in the model, which is depicted with two-way arrows. Gender was allowed to correlate with all the exogenous variables in the model and serve as a predictor for all endogenous variables.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Fit Model in which standardized coefficients are shown. All exogenous variables were allowed to correlate freely in the model. In addition, we added gender and depression as a covariate. Note - *p < .05, ** p < .01, ***p < .001. N = 941; χ2 (6df) = 14.727, p = 0.0225; CFI = 0.989; RMSEA = 0.039; 90% CI (0.014, 0.065).
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