Childhood Trauma and Substance Use in an Undergraduate Population: Revisiting the Role of Impulsivity

Abstract

The comorbidity between traumatic childhood experiences and subsequent substance use has been well established. Negative urgency is defined as a need to act rashly in response to negative emotions, and positive urgency is the urge to act impulsively in the context of positive emotions. The purpose of this study is to explore if negative and positive urgency partially account for the relationship between childhood trauma and the use of substances in university students. A total of 209 students (Mage = 20.81, SD = 4.68) were recruited from the University of New Brunswick and completed a questionnaire package online, which included measures of childhood trauma, urgency, frequency of substance use and problematic use of various substances. Results showed significant positive correlations between childhood trauma and cannabis/alcohol problems, between childhood trauma and positive and negative urgency and between alcohol and cannabis problems and positive and negative urgency scores. Mediation analysis showed a significant indirect effect of negative urgency between childhood trauma and alcohol problems, but not for cannabis problems. The study suggests that interventions that reduce negative urgency may be promising to mitigate the effects of trauma on substance use behaviours.