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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- When it comes to depression and alcohol, it's not how often you drink but how much you drink at any one time that makes the difference.
A new study links binge drinking to major depression in both men and women, but the finding was much stronger in women than in men.
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Canadian researchers surveyed about 6,000 men and 8,000 women about depression and drinking habits. Investigators asked the participants questions about how often they drank, how much they drank per drinking occasion, how much they drank overall, and how often they drank heavily. They also assessed the people for criteria indicating a clinical diagnosis of depression and asked about recent feelings of depression.
"Depression is most strongly related to a pattern of binge drinking," reports study author Kathryn Graham, from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Western Ontario. "A pattern of frequent but low-quantity drinking is not associated with depression. In fact, those who usually drink fewer than two drinks per occasion and never drink as much as five drinks are less depressed -- for both measures of depression -- than former drinkers. This relationship with drinking pattern is greater for women than for men."
Graham and her fellow investigators note many studies have examined the effect of depression on alcohol abuse and visa versa, with conflicting results. She writes the new results suggest these studies need to take the type of depression, along with the type of alcohol consumption, into consideration.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCE: Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, published online Jan. 3, 2007
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