Being a Penn State student for 4 years now, I have seen prescription stimulants being used widely by different students here for academic studying purposes. I wanted to further investigate the trend between different colleges and students nation-wide involving the use of non-medical prescription stimulants.
The peer-reviewed article I have found discusses the results of a survey distributed to over ten thousand students from 119 different nationally recognized four year colleges in order to find different trends for non-medical use of stimulants for studying. The survey asked students about taking prescription stimulants such as Ritalin, Dexedrine, or Adderall, ad also asked specific questions about themselves. These questions ranged from ethnicity and gender, to whether or not they were in Greek life, and what major they were in within their college.
The results from the survey have shown that the use of prescription stimulants is more prevalent for certain sub-groups of college students. It was found that 6.9% of the students surveyed have used a prescription stimulant for a non-medical purpose at least once during their college career. White males were more prevalent to use these prescription drugs for non-medical use then other gender and ethnicity groups. Also, the survey demonstrated a higher percentage of use for students who were in Greek Life. It was found that colleges in the Northeastern area of the United States had seemed to have a higher rate of use then those from colleges in other parts of the country.
Overall, it didn't surprise me too much that Penn State seems to fit the criteria of some of the higher use sub-groups of students from this survey. When I originally saw the 6.9 percent use for students who have at least done it once, I thought it seemed low compared to what I thought Penn State University would be. I would be curious to know the percentage of Penn State students who have tried using non-medical prescription stimulants at one point in their college career.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2005.00944.x/abstract
No comments:
Post a Comment