Charles J Holahan
Professor — Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Contact
- E-mail: holahan@utexas.edu
- Phone: (512) 471-3320
- Office: SEA 3.202
Interests
Health Psychology, Stress and Coping, Addictive Behaviors
Biography
Dr. Holahan does not plan to accept a new graduate student for Fall 2021.
Charles Holahan received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has been a visiting faculty member at the Center for Health Care Evaluation at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His area of interest is health psychology, with specializations in stress and coping and addictive behaviors. His stress and coping research focuses on stress resistance, which examines factors that discriminate between individuals who remain healthy versus those who become emotionally or physically ill in the context of life stressors. His research on addictive behaviors examines social influences on cigarette smoking, depression and cigarette smoking, maladaptive coping and alcohol abuse, and mortality as a function of smoking level and alcohol consumption.
Dr. Holahan has been awarded the Jeanne Holloway, President's Associates, Dad’s Association, Raymond Dickson, and Regents' teaching awards and is a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
Courses
PSY 341K • Health Psychology-Wb
42820 • Spring 2021
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM
Internet; Synchronous
Wr
PSY 341K • Health Psychology-Wb
41440 • Fall 2020
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM
Internet; Synchronous
Wr
PSY 379H • Honors Research II-Wb
41540 • Fall 2020
Meets W 2:00PM-5:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
IIWr
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
42035 • Spring 2020
Meets T 2:00PM-5:00PM SEA 4.242
II
PSY 341K • Health Psychology
41650 • Fall 2019
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM SEA 2.108
Wr
PSY 379H • Honors Research II
41755 • Fall 2019
Meets W 2:00PM-5:00PM SEA 2.108
IIWr
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
42600 • Spring 2019
Meets TH 2:00PM-5:00PM SEA 4.242
II
PSY 341K • Health Psychology
42815 • Fall 2018
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM SEA 2.108
Wr
PSY 379H • Honors Research II
42915 • Fall 2018
Meets W 2:00PM-5:00PM SEA 2.108
IIWr
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
42805 • Spring 2018
Meets T 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 4.242
II
PSY 341K • Health Psychology
43150 • Fall 2017
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM SEA 2.108
Wr
PSY 379H • Honors Research II
43245 • Fall 2017
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.108
IIWr
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
43300 • Spring 2017
Meets T 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 4.242
II
PSY 379H • Honors Research II
43235 • Fall 2016
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.108
IIWr
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
42440 • Spring 2016
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 4.242
II
PSY 341K • Health Psychology
42310 • Fall 2015
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM SEA 2.108
Wr
PSY 341K • Health Psychology
42690 • Spring 2015
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
Wr
PSY 379H • Honors Research II
43810 • Fall 2014
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 4.242
Wr
C2
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
44135 • Spring 2014
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 3.250
PSY 341K • Health Psychology
43780 • Fall 2013
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
Wr
PSY 341K • Health Psychology
43440 • Spring 2013
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
PSY 379H • Honors Research II
43405 • Fall 2012
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 4.242
Wr
C2
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
43350 • Spring 2012
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 3.250
UGS 302 • Psychology And Health
63800 • Fall 2011
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM SEA 3.250
Wr
UGS 302 • Psychology And Health
63490 • Spring 2011
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 3.250
Wr
PSY 379H • Honors Research II
43240 • Fall 2010
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.108
Wr
C2
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
44010 • Spring 2010
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.224
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
43915 • Fall 2009
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
42940 • Spring 2009
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 379H • Honors Research II-W
44320 • Fall 2008
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.108
C2
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
44160 • Spring 2008
Meets W 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.108
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors
44835 • Fall 2007
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 379H • Honors Research II-W
44945 • Fall 2006
Meets F 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.114
C2
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
42775 • Spring 2006
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
43105 • Spring 2006
Meets F 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.116
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
42775 • Fall 2005
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 394Q • Stress/Coping In Occupat Hlth
43220 • Fall 2005
Meets F 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.224
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
41245 • Spring 2005
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
42315 • Fall 2004
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 379H • Honors Research II-W
42690 • Fall 2004
Meets F 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.224
C2
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
39770 • Spring 2004
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM NOA 1.116
SB
PSY 359H • Honors Research I
40115 • Spring 2004
Meets F 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.224
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
40765 • Fall 2003
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 394Q • Stress/Coping In Occupat Hlth
41340 • Fall 2003
Meets F 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.224
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
39995 • Spring 2003
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM NOA 1.116
SB
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
40685 • Fall 2002
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SEA 2.108
SB
PSY 394Q • Occupational Health Psychology
41137 • Fall 2002
Meets F 1:00PM-4:00PM SEA 2.224
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
39895 • Spring 2002
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM PAR 306
SB
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
40900 • Fall 2001
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM PAR 304
SB
PSY 379H • Honors Research II-W
41245 • Fall 2001
Meets F 1:00PM-3:00PM MEZ 402
C2
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
39685 • Spring 2001
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM PAR 306
SB
PSY 359H • Honors Research I-W
40015 • Spring 2001
Meets F 1:00PM-4:00PM MEZ 402
C2
PSY 301 • Intro To Psychology-Honors-W
40615 • Fall 2000
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM PAR 304
SB
PSY 394Q • Stress, Coping, And Health
41095 • Fall 2000
Meets F 9:00AM-12:00PM MEZ 402
Publications
Selected Publications
Holahan, C. J., Holahan, C. K., Lim, S., & Powers, D. A. (2020). Living with a smoker and multiple health risk behaviors. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Online ahead of print.
Holahan, C. J., Holahan, C. K., Lim, S., & Powers, D. A. (2020). Living with a smoker, health risk behaviors, and adiposity: An analysis with middle-aged and older women. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 43, 850-858.
Holahan, C. J., Holahan, C. K., Zhen, L., & Powers, D. A. (2019). Living with a smoker and general and central adiposity in middle-aged and older women. American Journal of Health Promotion, 33, 925-927.
Holahan, C. J., Jacquart, J., & Moos, R. H. (2019). Healthcare work environments. In C. Llewellyn (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of psychology, health and medicine. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Holahan, C. J., Brennan, P. L., Schutte, K. K, Holahan, C. K., Hixon, J. G., & Moos, R. H. (2018). Drinking Level vs. Drinking Pattern and Cigarette Smoking Among Older Adults. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 42, 795-802.
Holahan, C. J., Schutte, K. K, Brennan, P. L., Holahan, C. K., & Moos, R. H. (2017). Late-life drinking problems: The predictive roles of drinking level vs. drinking pattern. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 78, 435-441.
Holahan, C. J., North, N. J., & Moos, R. H. (2017). Stress. In A. Wenzel (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Abnormal and Clinical Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Holahan, C. K., Holahan, C. J., Li, X., & Chen, Y. (2017). Association of health-related behaviors, attitudes, and appraisals to leisure-time physical activity in middle-aged and older women. Women and Health, 57, 121-136.
Vassillière, C. T., Holahan, C. K., & Holahan, C. J. (2016). Race, perceived discrimination, and emotion-focused coping. Journal of Community Psychology, 44, 524-530.
Holahan, C. K., Holahan, C. J., & Li, X. (2015). Living with a smoker and physical inactivity: An unexplored health behavior pathway. American Journal of Health Promotion, 30, 19-21.
Holahan, C. J., Schutte, K. K, Brennan, P. L., Holahan, C. K., & Moos, R. H. (2015). Drinking level, drinking pattern, and 20-year total mortality among late-life moderate drinkers. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 67, 552-558.
Holahan, C. J., Moos, R. H., Holahan, C. K., & Brennan, P. L. (2014). Social context, coping strategies, and depressive symptoms: An expanded model with cardiac patients. In H. T. Reis (Ed.), Methodological innovations in social psychology (Vol. 5). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. (This is a republication of an article previously published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.)
Holahan, C. J., Schutte, K. K, Brennan, P. L., Holahan, C. K., & Moos, R. H. (2014). Episodic heavy drinking and 20-year total mortality among late-life moderate drinkers. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 38, 1432-1438.
Holahan, C. K., Holahan, C. J., Li, X., & Jung, S. (2013). Social influences on smoking in American workers: The role of the presence of smokers in the workplace and in the home. American Journal of Health Promotion, 28, 105-107.
Holahan, C. K., Holahan, C. J., North, R. J., Hayes, R. B., Powers, D. A., & Ockene, J. K. (2013). Smoking status, physical health-related quality of life, and mortality in middle-aged and older women. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 15, 662-669.
Holahan, C. J., North, R. J., Holahan, C. K., Hayes, R. B., Powers, D. A., & Ockene, J. K. (2012). Social influences on smoking in middle-aged and older women. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 26, 519-526.
Holahan, C. J., Schutte, K. K, Brennan, P. L., North, R. J., Holahan, C. K., Moos, B. S., & Moos, R. H. (2012). Wine consumption and 20-year mortality among late-life moderate drinkers. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 73, 80-88.
Holahan, C. K., Holahan, C. J., Velasquez, K. E., Jung, S., North, R. J., & Pahl, S. L. (2011). Purposiveness and leisure-time physical activity in women in early midlife. Women and Health, 51, 661-675.
Holahan, C. K., Holahan, C. J., Powers, D. A., Ockene, J. K., Marti, C. N., & Hays, R. B. (2011). Depressive symptoms and smoking in middle-aged and older women. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 13, 722-731.
Holahan, C. J., Schutte, K. K., Brennan, P. L., Holahan, C. K., Moos, B. S., & Moos, R. H. (2010). Late-Life Alcohol Consumption and 20-Year Mortality. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 34, 1961-1971.
Holahan, C. J., Pahl, S. A., Cronkite, R. C., Holahan, C. K., North, R. J., & Moos, R. H. (2010). Depression and Vulnerability to Incident Physical Illness Across 10 Years. Journal of Affective Disorders, 123, 222-229.
Stress, Coping, and Health Lab
The Stress, Coping, and Health Lab focuses broadly on health psychology, with specializations in stress and coping and addictive behaviors. The stress and coping research focuses on stress resistance, which examines factors that discriminate between individuals who remain healthy versus those who become emotionally or physically ill in the context of life stressors. The research on addictive behaviors examines social influences on cigarette smoking, depression and cigarette smoking, maladaptive coping and alcohol abuse, and mortality as a function of smoking level and alcohol consumption.
Contact
Charles J. Holahan, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology (A8000)
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
Phone: (512) 471-3320 (office), (512) 471-6572 (FAX)
Email: holahan@utexas.edu
Collaborators
Carole Holahan, Ph.D.
Health Behavior and Health Education Program
Department of Kinesiology and Health Education
University of Texas at Austin
Rudolf Moos, Ph.D.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University School of Medicine
Penny Brennan, Ph.D.
Institute for Health and Aging
University of California, San Francisco
Kathleen Schutte, Ph.D.
Center for Health Care Evaluation
VA Palo Alto Health Care System
Rebecca North, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Southwestern University
Current Research
With support from the National Cancer Institute, the lab is currently focusing on living with a smoker, cross-domain health risk behaviors, and obesity. Although second-hand tobacco smoke is recognized as a cancer risk, the possibility that living with a smoker fosters a broad household culture of cancer-relevant negative health behaviors is unstudied. Dynamic models of health behavior have considered clustering of different behaviors within individuals and contagion of the same behavior between individuals. We combine these two areas of discovery by examining the possibility that an individual's health behavior may influence another individual's health behavior in a different domain. The research tests an innovative model linking living with a smoker to low physical activity, sedentary behavior, unhealthy diet, and overweight/obesity among middle-aged and older women, a population at risk of exposure to passive-smoking. The research uses data from the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study.
The rationale for this project is that rigorous tests of the links between living with a smoker and cancer-relevant negative health behaviors in other domains will provide a foundation for developing more effective cancer prevention strategies. We are pursuing three specific aims: (1) examining living with a smoker in predicting overweight/obesity; (2) exploring the role of physical activity, sedentary behavior, and diet in mediating between living with a smoker and overweight/obesity; and (3) examining living with a smoker in predicting overweight/obesity and health risk behaviors among groups of women at increased health risk associated with health disparities and history of cancer.
Lab History
Social context and depression. Early lab research is framed within social contextual models of depression. A key contribution of the research involves predicting depression in a framework that emphasizes contextual stressors and resources. In a series of one-year longitudinal studies with two samples of community respondents, we showed that personality strengths and family support prospectively predicted less depression over a one-year period. In two longitudinal studies with 424 community controls followed for 10 years and 424 matched depressed patients followed for 9 years after a depressive episode, we broadened our framework to encompass stress-related resource deterioration. We demonstrated that the association between changes in stressors and depressive symptoms across 10 years was mediated through resource change. In a two-year longitudinal design with a sample of over 250 college students (with my graduate student John Potthoff) we further broadened the framework to include stress generation.
Personal and social resources and coping. As the work evolved, we developed a model that unified work on predicting adjustment and on predicting coping responses. In a four-year model with 400 community respondents, we showed that under high stressors personal and social resources relate to future psychological adjustment indirectly, through more adaptive coping strategies. Subsequent analyses with four different samples—175 students coping with the college transition (with my graduate student David Valentiner), 325 patients coping with cardiac illness, 52 caregivers of children with diabetes, and 43 caregivers of head-injured patients—provided further support for the model. Using another sample of 183 individuals coping with cardiac disorders, we showed that negative aspects of relationships were as strongly related to less adaptive coping and poorer adjustment as positive aspects of relationships were related to more adaptive coping and better adjustment. Further refining the model, we used a sample of over 1200 older adults to show that avoidance coping predicted more life stressors four years later and that these stressors linked avoidance coping to depressive symptoms 10 years later.
Coping and alcohol abuse. Later, we broadened our predictive framework to encompass the role of maladaptive coping in alcohol abuse. In two studies, we examined drinking to cope and drinking behavior. Among 424 community controls, baseline drinking to cope predicted more alcohol consumption and drinking problems across a 10-year interval. Similarly, among 424 matched depressed patients, baseline drinking to cope predicted more alcohol consumption 10 years later and more drinking problems 4 years later. Further research revealed that depressed patients engage in more drinking to cope than do community controls, and that life context vulnerabilities explain the relationship between depression and drinking to cope. A next step linked alcohol consumption to total mortality among older adults. We examined this issue in a sample of 1824 adults aged 55 to 65 at baseline followed for 20-years. Findings showed that the survival effect for moderate drinking compared to abstention among older adults in significant part reflects confounding factors. However, even after taking account of traditional and nontraditional confounding factors, moderate alcohol consumption continued to predict lower mortality risk.
Modeling addictive behaviors. More recently, we further broadened our predictive framework to examine integrative models of addictive behaviors encompassing personal and social contextual factors and patterns of substance use. We demonstrated the predictive roles of both depressive symptoms and social influences in smoking among 90,000 middle-aged and older women in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study. Findings demonstrated a consistent link between depressive symptoms and current smoking, reduced smoking cessation, and smoking uptake. Moreover, social influences of low social support and living with a smoker were linked to current smoking, heavier smoking, reduced smoking cessation, and smoking relapse among middle-aged and older women. Next, we extended the scope of alcohol research among older adults to encompass drinking patterns as well as average level of alcohol consumption. We demonstrated that among over 400 older individuals who were on average moderate drinkers, episodes of heavy drinking more than doubled 20-year mortality risk. Broadening this work, findings with 1121 older adults showed, consistent with NIAA guidelines, that low-risk drinking among older adults requires avoiding both high average consumption and episodic heavy drinking.