Students Who Get Drunk Weekly Have
Higher Risk
of Injuries
Source:
Wake Forest
University Baptist Medical Center
Released: Mon 16-May-2005, 16:45 ET
Newswise — College students who get drunk at least
once a week are significantly more likely to be hurt or injured than other
student drinkers, according to new research from Wake Forest University
School of Medicine.
Wake Forest 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. They 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.
“When you drink, you’re also at risk because of
other people’s drinking,” O’Brien said.
For example, 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.
“Each year approximately 1,700 college students die
from alcohol-related injuries,” said Mary Claire O’Brien, M.D., assistant
professor of emergency medicine and public health sciences at Wake Forest’s
School of Medicine, which is part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical
Center. “Our goal was to develop 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.”
O’Brien said that current screening tools define
problem drinking as having four or five drinks in a row. The research is
funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).
According to the NIAAA, about four out of five students
drink and about half of the drinkers engage in heaving episodic consumption.
It is estimated that 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.
© 2005
Newswise. All Rights Reserved.
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