Availability of community resources reduces the association among community violence exposure, negative emotionality, and substance use disorders.

Abstract

Background: Exposure to community violence is associated with increased occurrence of substance use disorders (SUD). The self-medication hypothesis states that heightened negative emotionality may underlie the link between exposure to community violence and SUD. However, it is not well-understood if access to community resources, a broader public health approach, influences the purported psychological mechanisms underlying the link between community violence exposure and SUD.

Objective: We examined whether negative emotionality mediates the association between youth-onset community violence exposure and having a SUD and whether community resources (i.e., density of social services, health care services, healthy food) moderate the relationship between negative emotionality and having a SUD.

Methods: Moderated mediation analyses were used to test the indirect effect of negative emotionality and the moderating role of community resources on the association between negative emotionality and having a SUD.

Participants and setting: A sample of 376 participants was collected from New Haven (ages 18-73, 45.7% Black, 44.1% White, 7.6% Hispanic).

Results: There was a significant indirect effect of negative emotionality on the association between youth-onset community violence and having a substance use disorder (indirect effect = 0.22, SE = 0.07, p = .001, 95 % CI [0.11, 0.38]; proportion mediated = 0.24). Further, increased density of community resources reduced the relationship between negative emotionality and having a substance use disorder (β = -0.23, SE = 0.07, p = .001, 95% CI[-0.36, -0.10]).

Conclusion: Increasing availability of community resources may play a role in alleviating the suffering resulting from violence exposure.