Exploring the Role of Drinking Motivations in the Relationship Between Race-Based Traumatic Stress and Hazardous Alcohol Use Among Racially and Ethnically Diverse College Students

Race-based traumatic stress (RBTS) has emerged as an important psychological consequence of racial discrimination and has been linked to hazardous alcohol use among emerging adults. However, little is known about the psychological mechanisms through which RBTS contributes to alcohol misuse or whether these mechanisms vary across ethnoracial contexts. Guided by racial trauma theory and the self-medication hypothesis, this study examined whether drinking motives to cope mediated associations between RBTS symptoms and hazardous drinking and whether this indirect pathway differed across ethnoracial groups in a sample of 368 racially and ethnically diverse college students attending a minority-serving institution. Drinking motives to cope partially mediated the relationship between race-based avoidance symptoms and hazardous drinking among Black non-Hispanic and Asian non-Hispanic students. Findings suggest that coping-motivated drinking may represent one mechanism linking race-based avoidance to hazardous alcohol use while highlighting ethnoracial heterogeneity in this pathway.