New research suggests college students who regularly get drunk have a higher risk of injuries

May 23 2005

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.

Ten North Carolina universities are taking part in the Wake Forest study with students being surveyed once a year on their alcohol consumption, availability of alcohol, attitudes and perceptions, and consequences experienced from drinking. Strategies to reduce problem drinking are being implemented at half of the campuses, with emphasis on forming campus-community coalitions that address issues specific to each school. The web-based student surveys are one of several measures of the project’s effectiveness.

The multidisciplinary study team is led by Robert H. DuRant, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics and public health sciences at Wake Forest Baptist. The research is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

O’Brien’s research is based on the first student web survey in 2003, which found that 63 percent of students under age 21 drink and that 20 percent of the drinkers usually have seven or more drinks. More than half of the drinkers said they got drunk at least once a week.

According to the NIAAA, about four out of five students drink and about half of the drinkers engage in heavy episodes of drinking. It is estimated that 97,000 students each year are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape, that almost a third 31 percent of college students meet the criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol abuse and that 2.8 million college students drove under the influence of alcohol last year.

The 10 universities involved in the study are Appalachian State, Duke, High Point, Western Carolina and the Asheville, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Wilmington and Pembroke campuses of the University of North Carolina.

The results were reported this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in New York City.