Self-Evaluation as a Mediating Variable between Substance Abuse and Stress

People who abuse substances in order to reduce distressing thoughts, uncomfortable physical sensations, and negative emotions, inadvertently increase these stress-related sensations. Deficits in emotion regulation skills, including self-evaluation skills, may have a role in determining this relationship. We examined the mediating role of self-evaluation in the relationship between substance abuse and stress. 57 adults who abused alcohol and other substances completed measures of self-evaluation, symptoms of stress, and severity of alcohol and substance abuse. We tested self-evaluation as a mediating variable in two models depicting the association between (1) severity of alcohol abuse and stress and (2) severity of other substance abuse and stress. Self-evaluation and severity of substance abuse (other than alcohol) accounted for 16% (F (2, 54) = 5.09, p < 0.01) of the variance in stress, and self-evaluation partially mediated the relationship between severity of substance abuse and symptoms of stress (unstandardized indirect effect =0.08). Self-evaluation was not correlated with severity of alcohol abuse. Substance abuse may be associated with deficits in self-evaluation skills, leading to poor regulation of stress.