Consequences of cocaine use facilitate impulsiveness-depression relationship

The lifetime consequences of cocaine use serve as a pathway between impulsiveness and depression symptoms, Jamey J. Lister, Ph.D., and his associates in the department of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Wayne State University, Detroit, reported.

The authors analyzed a sample of 108 cocaine users aged 24-57 years: most of the participants were male (81.5%) and African American (80.6%). They found that lifetime cocaine-use consequences partly mediated the relationship between the subscales of nonplanning impulsiveness (R² = .42), attentional impulsiveness (R² = .40), and motor impulsiveness (R² = .24), and depression symptoms.

“These findings indicate that depression functions primarily as a response to impulsiveness and the level of cocaine use consequences experienced by regular cocaine users,” Dr. Lister and his associates wrote.

Read the full article in Addictive Behaviors (doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2014.09.017).