Asian Americans' childhood emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and hazardous alcohol use: Resilience as moderator.

Abstract

Asian Americans are highly underrepresented in alcohol use research, despite recent studies demonstrating the presence of hazardous alcohol use behaviors and increasing alcohol use rates among Asian Americans. Emotional abuse and emotional neglect serve as important individual factors that may impact hazardous alcohol use. The purpose of this study was thus to investigate (a) the association between childhood emotional trauma and hazardous alcohol use and (b) the role of resilience as a moderator. Asian American participants (N = 279) completed an online remote survey. Our findings revealed that childhood emotional neglect, but not emotional abuse, was significantly and positively associated with hazardous alcohol use. We found that resilience moderated the association between childhood emotional neglect and hazardous alcohol use so that only participants with average or high resilience experienced a significant association between childhood emotional neglect and hazardous alcohol use. The findings indicate that emotional neglect is a specific form of childhood trauma that is significantly associated with hazardous alcohol use, perhaps as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Additionally, marginalized populations that demonstrate resilience may suffer negative health outcomes such as hazardous alcohol use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).