In this review, we consider the potential service needs of children of substance abusing parents based on what we know about the risk outcomes faced by these children and the parenting deficits often present in these families. Importantly, our review does not address the etiological role of parental substance abuse in children's negative outcomes but instead we discuss the complex inter-related risk factors that often co-occur with and exacerbate risk associated with parental alcohol and drug use. We first review studies showing the elevated risk that children of substance abusing parents face in general for poorer academic functioning; emotional, behavioral, and social problems; and an earlier onset of substance use, faster acceleration in substance use patterns, and higher rates of alcohol and drug use disorders. We then review studies showing contextual risk factors for children of substance abusing parents, including parenting deficits (less warmth, responsiveness, and physical and verbal engagement as well as harsher and more over-involved interaction styles), greater risk for child maltreatment, and less secure attachment patterns. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for research and guidelines for professionals working with children and their families where parental substance abuse is present.

Influential psychological theories hypothesize that people consume alcohol in response to the experience of both negative and positive emotions. Despite two decades of daily diary and ecological momentary assessment research, it remains unclear whether people consume more alcohol on days they experience higher negative and positive affect in everyday life. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we synthesized the evidence for these daily associations between affect and alcohol use. We included individual participant data from 69 studies (N = 12,394), which used daily and momentary surveys to assess affect and the number of alcoholic drinks consumed. Results indicate that people do not drink more often on days they experience high negative affect, but are more likely to drink and drink heavily on days high in positive affect. People self-reporting a motivational tendency to drink-to-cope and drink-to-enhance were estimated to consume more alcohol, but not to consume more alcohol on days they experience higher negative and positive affect. Results were robust across different operationalizations of affect, study designs, study populations, and individual characteristics. Based on our findings, we collectively propose an agenda for future research to explore open questions surrounding affect and alcohol use.

Influential psychological theories hypothesize that people consume alcohol in response to the experience of both negative and positive emotions. Despite two decades of daily diary and ecological momentary assessment research, it remains unclear whether people consume more alcohol on days they experience higher negative and positive affects in everyday life. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we synthesized the evidence for these daily associations between affect and alcohol use. We included individual participant data from 69 studies (N = 12,394), which used daily and momentary surveys to assess the affect and the number of alcoholic drinks consumed. Results indicate that people are not more likely to drink on days they experience high negative affect but are more likely to drink and drink heavily on days high in positive affect. People self-reporting a motivational tendency to drink-to-cope and drink-to-enhance consumed more alcohol but not on days they experienced higher negative and positive affects. Results were robust across different operationalizations of affect, study designs, study populations, and individual characteristics. These findings challenge the long-held belief that people drink more alcohol following increase in negative affect. Integrating these findings under different theoretical models and limitations of this field of research, we collectively propose an agenda for future research to explore open questions surrounding affect and alcohol use.

This is the first reported study to examine within-person processes of adolescent self-medication related to daily variability in mood and the peer context. Adolescent self-medication processes appear to differ depending on the type of negative affect and whether daily affective experiences are chronic or fluctuating, suggesting that the affective processes that cue adolescents to engage in substance use are quite nuanced.

Rates of substance use and comorbid psychopathology peak during adolescence, highlighting the need to identify transdiagnostic risk processes that cut across conditions and elucidate early embedded risk factors for comorbidity across development. The current review highlights emotion regulation deficits as a core transdiagnostic risk factor underlying the development of substance use, addiction, and comorbid psychopathology in adolescence. We present the dual systems model of neurological development to highlight adolescence as a critical period of increased risk for emotion regulation difficulties, corresponding risk behaviors, and psychopathology. We describe malfunction in the neurobiological regulation system underlying the relationship between emotion regulation and risk for addiction and comorbidity. We pull from two established developmental theories including both the externalizing pathway and the internalizing pathway to substance use disorders, which together highlight how early embedded risk in the form of emotion regulation deficits can explain mechanisms underlying the development of addiction and comorbid psychiatric disorders.