Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Hispanic/Latin individuals in the U.S. experience many health disparities, including worse alcohol-related outcomes. Thus, identifying psycho-sociocultural factors that may play a role in alcohol-related problems among these individuals is vital to informing prevention and treatment efforts. Minority stress-based models of alcohol misuse posit that some Hispanic/Latin individuals may drink (and continue to drink despite drinking-related problems) to alleviate negative affect associated with experiencing ethnic discrimination. Yet, little research has directly tested this hypothesis. Given the social nature of both ethnic discrimination and drinking, it follows that experiencing more ethnic discrimination could be related to greater social anxiety and some individuals may misuse alcohol to cope with this type of negative affect. METHODS: Participants were 373 Hispanic/Latin current drinking undergraduates. RESULTS: Ethnic discrimination was significantly, positively correlated with alcohol-related problems, social anxiety, and coping motivated drinking, even after controlling for drinking frequency and quantity, traumatic life events, and several relevant demographic variables. Discrimination was indirectly related to alcohol-related problems via the sequential relations of social anxiety and coping motives. Alternative model testing indicated that social anxiety was not related to alcohol problems via discrimination, strengthening confidence in directionality of proposed relations. CONCLUSIONS: Discrimination is associated with greater anxiety about negative evaluation among Hispanic/Latin individuals. The current study extended understanding of the impact of this type of anxiety by determining that social anxiety appears to play an important role in the relation between discrimination and alcohol-related problems among Hispanic/Latin young adults.