Suicidality prospectively predicts greater urges to smoke following a cessation attempt: Mediation through perceived barriers to cessation

Emotion dysregulation and hazardous drinking in relation to suicidal ideation among Spanish-speaking Latinx daily-smokers

OBJECTIVE

Suicidal ideation has increased among Latinx individuals in the last decade. Smoking increases the likelihood of suicidal ideation but work on Latinx smokers is minimal. Hazardous drinking and emotion dysregulation could be factors related to suicidal ideation among Latinx smokers, as has been evident in non-Latinx White samples. The current study sought to examine the main and interactive effects of emotion dysregulation and hazardous drinking in relation to suicidal ideation among Latinx daily-smokers.

METHODS

Participants were 371 Spanish-speaking daily-smokers (58.8% female; M_age = 33.3; SD_age = 9.8) recruited from the United States through Qualtrics. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test an interactive model of emotion dysregulation and hazardous alcohol consumption in relation to suicidal ideation; we also tested the effect of emotion dysregulation on suicidal ideation as a function of hazardous drinking status.

RESULTS

Results indicated that latent emotional dysregulation was associated with greater suicidal ideation (p < 0.001); however, hazardous drinking was not related to suicidal ideation (p = 0.186). The interactive term of emotional dysregulation and hazardous drinking was significantly related to suicidal ideation (p = 0.017). Specifically, greater emotion dysregulation was significantly related to suicidal ideation among Latinx smokers who engaged in hazardous drinking (p < 0.001) but not those who did not engage in hazardous drinking (p = 0.123).

CONCLUSIONS

The current findings suggest that smoking combined with hazardous drinking may be related to increased suicidal ideation among Latinx smokers. Findings are discussed in relation to the potential role of intervention strategies that focus on emotion dysregulation and hazardous drinking among Latinx current daily smokers to mitigate suicidal risk among this established health disparities population.

Psychometric evaluation of the Barriers to Cessation Scale

The Barriers to Cessation Scale (BCS; Macnee & Talsma, 1995a) was developed to assess global and specific perceived barriers that may interfere with the quit process. Although the BCS is widely used in the literature, little scientific work has been devoted to examining the psychometric properties of the measure. Thus, the present study sought to address this gap by evaluating the BCS in a sample of 497 treatment-seeking smokers. The current study examined the factor structure of the BCS, measurement invariance of the BCS subscales across sex and over 2 time points, and evaluated construct validity. Results indicated that the BCS was best modeled by a higher order factor structure wherein the originally proposed 3-factor solution (Addiction, External, and Internal) constituted the lower order and a global factor constituted the higher order factor. The higher order BCS structure demonstrated partial measurement invariance across sex and full measurement invariance from baseline to quit day among treatment seeking smokers. Additionally, expected relations were observed between the BCS subscales and similar and divergent constructs, and predictive validity was partially supported. The current findings provide novel empirical evidence that the BCS is a reliable measure of perceived barriers to smoking cessation across multiple domains and is related to several affective and smoking processes the may interfere with the process of quitting. (PsycINFO Database Record