Professional Issues: Alcohol Abuse and College Counseling: An Overview of Research and Practice

✍ Scribed by Brett N. Steenbarger

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 785 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1099-0399
• DOI: 10.1002/j.2161-1882.1998.tb00126.x

✦ Synopsis

Recent research suggests that alcohol abuse is widespread among college students, with approximately 20% of all students qualifying as heavy drinkers and over 40% of students reporting at least 1 binge‐drinking episode in a given 2‐week period. This drinking is associated with a number of adverse consequences, including sexual misconduct, damage to property, academic difficulty, drunk driving, unsafe sex, and suicidality. This article identifies tools that have demonstrated value in detecting and assessing alcohol problems and summarizes those counseling approaches that have been found to be successful and unsuccessful in reducing alcohol consumption. A major conclusion is that the structure and content of most campus counseling services are poorly suited to deliver high quality interventions for students with alcohol problems. Five steps are identified far improving the level of programming for at‐risk college and university students.