Reczek added, “Some research suggests that men are more likely to cope with stressors in “externalizing” ways such as drinking more alcohol, possibly contributing to alcohol abuse or the disease of alcoholism. Women are more likely to cope in “internalizing” ways such as depression rather than alcohol abuse.
The study also looked into how drinking habits are affected when marriages end. The researchers found that while divorce causes men to drink more, women actually tend to go back to drinking less. Possible explanations for this, according to the researchers, could be that a husband’s heavy drinking may put couples at a higher risk of divorce. Another possibility is that, for men at least, the stress of the divorce may have prompted increased drinking.
Meanwhile, in the study participant interviews, an overwhelming majority of women said that either divorce depressed and turned them away from alcohol, or they drank less because they were no longer around their husband’s drinking.
Despite this, women that were long-term divorced and recently divorced reported significantly more drinking-related problems than long-term married women. And while the research thus far is not sufficient to draw a direct cause-and-effect relationship between drinking-related problems and rates of divorce, it may help physicians better recognize risk factors for problem drinking that lurk within our social lives.
Husbands & Wives: Who Drinks More, Who Drinks Less? was originally published on blackdoctor.org
