Adolescent internalizing symptoms are frequently associated with higher levels of contemporaneous or later alcohol use (King et al., 2004; Marmorstein, 2009; Marmorstein, 2010; McCarty et al., 2012). However, few studies have examined childhood internalizing symptoms and their relationship with early adolescent alcohol use. The current results indicate that the course of these symptoms – whether persistent or temporally limited – is largely irrelevant to later alcohol outcomes: it is sufficient to have merely experienced elevated internalizing symptoms sometime during childhood.
