New research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine, has found that college students who get drunk at least once a week are significantly more likely to be hurt or injured than other student drinkers.
The researchers suggests that at-risk students could be identified by the simple screening question – “In a typical week, how many days do you get drunk?”.
According to Mary Claire O’Brien, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine and public health sciences at Wake Forest’s School of Medicine, approximately 1,700 college students die from alcohol-related injuries each year, and there is a need for a simple tool to tell which student drinkers are at highest risk of getting hurt, as a result of their own drinking and the drinking of others.
The results are part of an ongoing, five-year research project to develop effective strategies for reducing problem drinking on college campuses.
The researchers found that students who got drunk at least once weekly were three times more likely to be hurt or injured due to their own drinking than student drinkers who do not report getting drunk at least once a week and were twice as likely to fall from a height and need medical care, and 75 percent more likely to be sexually victimized. Getting drunk was defined as being unsteady, dizzy or sick to your stomach.
O’Brien says that when you drink, you are also at risk because of other people’s drinking.She explains that students who got drunk at least once weekly were three times more likely to be in an automobile accident caused by someone else’s drinking and twice as likely to be taken advantage of sexually by someone who was drinking.
O’Brien’s goal was to identify a one-question screening tool that could be used in busy hospital emergency departments. She said the Wake Forest “single question” was designed specifically for college students, and the hospital emergency department presents a 'teachable moment'. Research has shown that a brief intervention, such as simple advice, can change drinking patterns.
O’Brien said that current screening tools define problem drinking as having four or five drinks in a row, and in her experience, patients lie about how much they drink. She says screening tests based on quantity don’t account for differences in weight, gender, alcohol tolerance, body metabolism, medications and other variables, and what it takes to make someone drunk varies from individual to individual.
The overall goal of the $3.2 million study to Prevent Alcohol-Related Consequences (SPARC) is to reduce the availability of alcohol to students and to help change campus cultures that promote drinking. The study uses such strategies as restricting alcohol at campus events, increasing enforcement, constraining marketing and educating alcohol sellers and servers, landlords, students and parents.