Anxiety Sensitivity and Situation-Specific Drinking in Women With Alcohol Problems

We examined the unique contributions of depression, anxiety, and anxiety sensitivity (AS) in predicting frequency of drinking in different high-risk situations among 60 women receiving treatment for alcohol problems. Participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Anxiety Sensitivity Index, and Short Form Inventory of Drinking Situations (IDS-42). Together, the negative emotionality variables reliably predicted scores on the IDS-42 negative and temptation drinking situations subscales but did not reliably predict scores on the IDS-42 positive drinking situations subscales.With one exception, only AS contributed unique variance in predicting negative and temptation context drinking. Both AS and depression contributed unique variance in predicting drinking in conflict with others situations. Implications for treating comorbid emotional and alcohol-use disorders in women are discussed. KEY WORDS: comorbidity, anxiety sensitivity, depression, situation-specific drinking, alcohol-use disorders, women. Self-reported anxiety anddepression frequently co-occur with heavy or ‘‘at-risk’ ’ and problem levels of alcohol consumption in females. Anx-iety, depression, and somatoform disorders are more commonly observed in female at-risk drinkers (more than20gof alcohol perday) com-paredwith femalemoderate drinkers/abstainers (Bott, Meyer, Rumpf, Hapke, & John, 2005)