Alcohol abuse may cause depression, says study

Christchurch, March 4: It is usually believed that a depressed man seeks solace in alcohol but a new study rebuffs the belief, saying that alcohol abuse actually precedes depressiondefine.

Using data gathered from a 25 years long study of health and development in New Zealand, David M. Fergusson, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago in New Zealand, tried to study the association between alcohol abuse and depressiondefine.

The study, reported in the March issue of ‘Archives of General Psychiatry’, involved 1,055 participants born in 1977. The subjects were examined for both conditions at ages 17 to 18, 20 to 21 and 24 to 25 years. They were also questioned about lifestyle and demographic factors.

Alcohol dependence was found to lead to major depression.

"At all ages, there were clear and statistically significant trends for alcohol abuse or dependency to be associated with increased risk of major depression," wrote the researchers. "Individuals who fulfilled the criteria for alcohol abuse or dependency were 1.9 times more likely to also fulfill the criteria for major depression.”

Alcohol abuse and depression have been linked by numerous studies in the past but science has yet to figure if the association is casual or there is some common underlying factor. "It has been proposed that this link may arise from genetic processes in which the use of alcohol acts to trigger genetic markers that increase the risk of major depression," said the researchers.

Also, there is a possibility of the depressant characters of alcohol playing a role in the depression of people who consume it in excess.

The researchers cautioned that these "are only approximations to a more complex set of conditions." Therefore, they wrote, "Our findings should be viewed as suggestive rather than definitive."