Gender Differences in Affects and Craving in Alcohol‐Dependence: A Study During Alcohol Detoxification

Abstract

Given the importance of craving in relapse, special care should be given to improve depressive symptoms in AD women to promote long-term abstinence. Also, the remaining portion of AD women who still exhibit substantial symptoms of anxiety and depression at the end of detoxification could benefit from an integrated treatment simultaneously tackling mood and alcohol-dependence disorders.

Gender Differences in Anxiety and Depression before and after Alcohol Detoxification: Anxiety and Depression as Gender-Related Predictors of Relapse

“…This could be explained by the fact that AUDs needing hospitalization for detoxification usually show a severe pattern of alcohol consumption, regardless of gender. The alcohol detoxification program impacted anxiety and depression symptoms in both genders, but in contrast too previous findings [20], the reduction of depressive symptoms severity was significantly greater in females than in males. During the 12 months following discharge, levels of anxiety and depression increased without reaching those levels encountered at admission, with specific gender differences; that is, males seemed to present state and trait anxiety symptoms more quickly than females, whereas females were more prone to experiencing worsening depressive symptoms.…”

“…Consistent with previous studies [9,15,19,20], females with AUD suffered from higher levels of state/trait anxiety and depression than males. Although there is strong evidence of more severe drinking behaviors in men (for a review see Erol & Karpyak, 2015), according to this study, females did not differ from males in alcohol use severity at time of admission to the inpatient detoxification program.…”

“…The relationship between negative affect, unpleasant mood states, depression, and alcohol use, as well as the predictive value of depression for alcohol relapse in female with AUD has been shown in previous reports [15,16,18]. Furthermore, other studies have demonstrated that this relationship between negative affect and relapse among women may be mediated by craving [19,20,37]. In the present study, the extent of relapse appeared to correlate with the recurrence of trait anxiety, as the severity of alcohol use behavior was predicted by the level of trait anxiety in relapsed females.…”

“…Moreover, females with AUD showed to be more prone to drink in negative emotional situations than males, although this does not seem to be related to the presence of depressive or anxiety disorders [19]. A recent prospective observational study focusing on gender differences during alcohol detoxification found a correlation between negative affect and craving, especially in women [20]. However, to the best of our knowledge, there have been no prospective studies on gender differences in anxiety and depression levels before versus after alcohol detoxification.…”

Males are more sensitive to reward and less sensitive to loss than females among people with internet gaming disorder: fMRI evidence from a card-guessing task

“…A study by Dong et al (2011) showed that internet addicts associated with increased activation in the orbitofrontal cortex in win trials and decreased anterior cingulate activation in loss trials than healthy controls, suggesting that internet addicts have enhanced reward sensitivity and decreased loss sensitivity compared with the healthy controls (24). The gender difference was considered an essential dimension in addictive studies (25,26). A survey found that male tend to spend more time on games than females (8).…”