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Alcohol Consumption in College

 

Alcohol Abuse in College

 

Overconsumption of Alcohol on University Campus’

By: Kyle Chauvin

Alcohol has many significant effects on us mentally and physically. This task helps in understanding how dangerous alcohol can be. In the year of 1999 alone, there was over 500,000 full time college students faced with unintentional physical injuries (Hingson, 1). It is said that this number is only expected to increase each year. Also, over 600,000 college students were hit or assaulted by another student (Hingson, 1). According to this study, alcohol has increasing effects on college student that consume too much. They become a greater risk and become increasingly more aggressive, as demonstrated in the above statistics.

 In another peer-reviewed article, it is stated that people with substance abuse are oftentimes prone to higher comorbid rates with mental disorders and individuals who do not abuse substances such as alcohol (Jane-Llopis, 2). Comorbidity is described as a situation where there is a presence of two or more conditions/diseases at one time. In other words, the more one consumes alcohol on a constant basis, they are more eligible to acquire conditions or diseases. The direct correlation between the intensity of the comorbidity and the severity of the abuse of the substance is strongly associated to each other (Jane-Llopis, 3).

Excessive amounts of alcohol is linked to stress. Stress is seen in everybody’s lives and in different amounts. Stressful life events lead to drinking alcohol as a coping mechanism which is not healthy (Keyes, 1). In having an understanding of stress and how alcohol is a coping mechanism, I can ask in my questionnaire if any of the members are experiencing stress. Having an understanding of the stress levels members are experiencing could help in mitigating the overconsumption of alcohol.

Over consuming alcohol is also linked to depression. According to the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Review, factual evidence has confirmed that alcohol is an underlying factor for depression (Jane-Llopis, 1). With this being known, I could ask the members of Sigma Phi Epsilon if they are depressed. I could also determine if members are more likely to be experiencing depression based on how much they are drinking.

References

Jane-Llopis, Eva, et al. “Mental Health and Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco: a Review of the Comorbidity between Mental Disorders and the Use of Alcohol, Tobacco and Illicit

Drugs.” Drug and Alcohol Review, Taylor and Francis Online, 12 July 2009, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09595230600944461.

Keyes, Katherine, et al. “Stressful Life Experiences, Alcohol Consumption, and Alcohol Use Disorders: the Epidemiologic Evidence for Four Main Types of Stressors.” Psychopharmacology, vol. 218, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–17.

Hingson, Ralph W, et al. “Magnitude of Alcohol-Related Mortality and Morbidity among U.S. College Students Ages 18-24.”Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 4 Jan. 2015, www.jsad.com/doi/citedby/10.15288/jsa.2002.63.136.