Psychiatry & Psychology | By December 06, 2008 | By Joseph Kim, MD, MPH | 4 Comments

Psychiatric Conditions and Alcohol Abuse in the College-Aged

I always find epidemiological studies very interesting because they can give you a snapshot of the prevalence of certain conditions. Have you ever wondered about the prevalence of psychiatric conditions and alcohol use disorders among college students? This is a topic that has been studied extensively by many different research groups.

Recently, an article was published about this topic by a group of researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and it caught my attention. According to a series of over 40,0000 interviews conducted in the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), almost half of college-aged individuals had a psychiatric disorder in the past year. What was very interesting about this survey was that college students had a greater risk of alcohol use disorder compared to non-college students in the same age group. Read more →