College students disciplined for alcohol use are heavier drinkers than their peers USA

Main Category: Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs
Article Date: 15 Jun 2004 - 23:00 PDT

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College students disciplined for alcohol use are heavier drinkers than their peers, but brief, required counseling interventions help reduce their drinking and associated problems, say researchers. Drunkenness, fighting, vandalism and other results of heavy drinking concern both college officials and police departments. College and university administrations are always looking for ways to reduce the damage caused by overdrinking.

A series of studies in the June issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests ways to do that.

Researcher Tracy O'Leary Tevyaw, Ph.D., and two colleagues from Brown University reported that students required by college disciplinary boards to attend alcohol intervention programs shared some characteristics with fellow students but differed in some other ways.

"Non-mandated students reported significantly higher grades in school and a lower percentage of heavy drinking days in the past month than mandated students," says Tevyaw. They also scored lower on tests for alcohol-related problems.

Both sets of students perceived similar levels of drinking around them. They both estimated that the average college student downed an average of seven drinks per drinking session, leading Tevyaw to suggest that all students might benefit from these interventions.

Other researchers compared two different approaches to move students away from problem drinking.

Brian Borsari, Ph. D., of Brown and Kate B. Carey, Ph.D., of Syracuse University found that alcohol education and brief motivational interventions both helped students.

The alcohol education approach presented factual knowledge about alcohol and its effects without tying it either to individual drinking or to personal goals to cut alcohol use. The brief motivational interventions took the same information but placed it in the context of the students' own experiences with alcohol: why they drink, how often, or what their blood alcohol levels are after heavy drinking.

This article continues in the Center for the Advancement of Health

By Aaron Levin, Science Writer
Health Behavior News Service