Individuals need to be aware of their behavior in order to acknowledge self-medication and to report its occurrence. Some individuals with mood conditions may consume alcohol without the insight that their consumption may be an attempt to alleviate negative affect. We were able to take into account differences in consumption patterns by frequency and quantity, as well as differences in diagnostic history. These characteristics in our analyses did not explain the self-medication/dependence associations. Related to this potential reporting bias is the concern that adequate validation of the single survey item to assess self-medication drinking has not been completed and poses further concerns regarding potential misclassification. However, although some individuals may underreport their self-medication drinking, those who do report this behavior may be an appropriate target for prevention and early intervention efforts at reducing the occurrence of dependence. Furthermore, if a large number of individuals in the sample had mood symptoms but underreported their self-medication drinking, this would tend to weaken the hypothesized associations in our analyses. This indicates that our findings may actually underestimate the self-medication/dependence associations. Yet reporting biases may work the other way, in that individuals who drink heavily may want to use self-medication as a way of
