PROBLEM DRINKING AND LIFE STRESS AMONG OLDER ADULTS

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The overall purpose of the research program is to enhance our understanding of the role of life context and coping factors in the initiation, maintenance, and remission of problem drinking among late-middle-aged and older adults. To address these issues, the project has developed inventories to reliably assess life stressors and social resources, coping responses, and problem drinking among older men and women. These inventories were used, together with a stress and coping framework, to examine the short-term (one-year) course of problem drinking among four groups of men and women: late-onset problem drinkers, chronic (early-onset) problem drinkers, remitted problem drinkers, and nonproblem drinkers. The work to date has focused on comparing late-life problem and nonproblem drinkers, contrasting men and women problem drinkers, describing late-onset problem drinkers, comparing remitted and nonremitted problem drinkers, and examining the associations between life context and coping factors and individual functioning, especially indices of drinking behavior and drinking problems. The proposed work is divided into four phases. Phase One is an examination of the correlates and predictors of short-term changes in problem drinking; it also focuses on the role of depression and other risk factors in late-life problem drinking. Phase Two involves a five-year follow-up to trace the medium-term course of late-life problem drinking and to examine how life context and coping factors predict changes in drinking behavior. It also focuses on adaptation among spouses of late-life problem drinkers and on the measurement of drinking problems among late-middle-aged and older adults. Phase Three examines the process of stress and coping among problem-drinking and nonproblem-drinking older adults. Finally, Phase Four involves the use of the three waves of data to further validate the measures of life stressors, social resources, and coping responses.