Drinking less and drinking smarter: direct and indirect protective strategies in young adults.

Efforts to increase the use of protective behavioral strategies are a common component in interventions for young adult drinking. Some strategies, including those utilized while drinking, are directly correlated with lower drinking levels (cf. Martens et al.

Reducing the Harms of College Student Drinking: How Alan Marlatt Changed Approaches, Outcomes, and the Field.

In this article, we discuss Alan Marlatt's contributions to the prevention and reduction of alcohol-related harms among college students. We consider Alan's early research that later led to the development and evaluation of college student drinking programs, and examine Alan's impact, both directly and indirectly through those he mentored and trained, as a scientist-practitioner. We review the recognition of the efficacy of Alan's programs, including the Alcohol Skills Training Program (ASTP) and Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS), in addition to extensions of these interventions in more recent studies.

College Student Drug Use: Patterns, Concerns, Consequences, and Interest in Intervention.

Although previous surveys have indicated high rates of illicit and prescription drug misuse among college students, few have assessed negative consequences, personal concerns, or interest in interventions for drug use. In a survey of 262 college students who self-reported lifetime use of an illicit drug, 69% reported at least one negative consequence over the course of their lifetime and 63% in the past year. Many also reported being moderately concerned (28%) about their drug or medication misuse and moderately interested in some form of intervention (76%).

Intervention defensiveness as a moderator of drinking outcome among heavy-drinking mandated college students.

The efficacy of the Alcohol Skills Training Program (ASTP; Miller, et al., 2000) was evaluated in 204 heavy-drinking college students randomly assigned to either ASTP (n=119) or an assessment-only control (n=85) condition. The volunteer ASTP sample (n=119) was also compared to a sample of students mandated to ASTP following a first-time sanction (n=90).

Protective strategies: a mediator of risk associated with age of drinking onset.

The goal of the current study was to determine if failure to develop/utilize alcohol-specific strategies to manage drinking behavior might serve as a mechanism through which early alcohol exposure leads to higher levels of later alcohol use and alcohol-related negative consequences, while taking into account impulsivity as an underlying risk factor for both of these outcomes. Data were collected between September and December of 2005 from a random sample of college students via an online survey. A total of 309 students provided complete data on all measure of interest.

Coercive sexual experiences, protective behavioral strategies, alcohol expectancies and consumption among male and female college students.

Alcohol use and sexual assault on college campuses are highly prevalent and the focus of numerous prevention and intervention efforts. Our goals were to gain a greater understanding of the relationship between coercive sexual experiences, utilization of protective behavioral strategies and alcohol expectancies and consumption among male and female college students. We surveyed 370 college students regarding their past year experiences and found that 34% of women and 31% of men reported unwanted sexual contact, 6% of women and 13% of men reported engaging in sexually coercive behavior, and 4% of women and 9% of men reported experiencing both unwanted contact and engaging in sexually coercive behavior.

Substance user treatment dropout from client and clinician perspectives: a pilot study.

Reasons for premature termination of outpatient substance user treatment were evaluated from client and clinician perspectives using qualitative (focus groups) and quantitative (survey) methods in a pilot study (N = 44). The sample consisted of clients (n = 22), the majority of whom were male (73%) and African American (50%) or Caucasian (41%). The sample of clinicians (n = 22) were predominantly female (64%), and Caucasian (52%) or African American (24%).

A pilot study of naltrexone and BASICS for heavy drinking young adults.

Heavy drinking young adults often have limited motivation to change their drinking behavior. Adding pharmacotherapy to brief counseling is a novel approach to treating this population. A small open-label pilot study was conducted to assess the feasibility of offering eight weeks of daily and targeted (i.

Concurrent and predictive validity of drug use and psychiatric diagnosis among first-time DWI offenders.

Background: Previous studies have found that driving while intoxicated (DWI) offenders report high rates of substance dependence and other psychiatric disorders.

Method: The current study evaluated the prevalence, clinical correlates at program admission, and prognostic significance over a 1-year follow-up of 2 diagnostic subgroup variables (drug abuse or dependence; mood or anxiety disorder) among 290 first-time DWI offenders receiving group counseling interventions.

Results: A lifetime diagnosis of drug abuse or dependence (42% of sample) was associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption, lower coping confidence, greater readiness to change, increased alcohol, drug, and legal problems, and more alcohol-related negative consequences at the initiation of DWI intervention.

If you feed them, will they come? The use of social marketing to increase interest in attending a college alcohol program.

The authors used social marketing to design and test advertisement components aimed at increasing students' interest in attending an alcohol program focused on reaching students who drink heavily, although the authors offered no such program. Participants were undergraduate students in introductory psychology courses (N = 551). Questionnaires included measures assessing demographic information, alcohol use and negative consequences, and interest in attending an alcohol program in response to exposure to 1 of 12 systematically varied advertisements.

Misperceptions of college student marijuana use: implications for prevention.

Objective: This study investigates the relationship between marijuana use, perceived norms of use by friends and students in general, and negative experiences or problems from alcohol and drug use. It was hypothesized that students would overestimate the marijuana use of students in general and that perceptions about the prevalence of marijuana use would be related to drug-related consequences.

Method: In this study, 5,990 participants provided information on the perceptions and consequences of drug use via an online survey or via a paper-based survey.

Interest and participation in a college student alcohol intervention study as a function of typical drinking.

Objective: This research explored the relationship between typical alcohol consumption and interest in participating in a brief alcohol intervention study and between typical consumption and actual participation in the study among students recruited to participate in an intervention study. We predicted a curvilinear relationship as a potential explanation for mixed findings from previous examinations of risk status and participation in alcohol intervention research. That is, we expected an inverted U-shaped relationship, with those at the lowest and highest ends of the drinking spectrum expressing the least interest in participation.

Treating adolescents together or individually? Issues in adolescent substance abuse interventions.

This article summarizes the proceedings of a symposium, chaired by Peter Monti and cochaired by Tracy O'Leary, that was presented at the 2001 RSA Meeting in Montreal, Quebec. The aim of this symposium was to present data on group- and individual-based interventions for adolescent alcohol and substance abuse, with a discussion of the implications of research findings bearing on developmental considerations when working with adolescents and young adults. Elizabeth J.