Prescription Misuse Linked with More Negative Outcomes for College Students

As college students head back to campus, a study shared by Oregon State University on Tuesday found that students who misuse prescription stimulants or opioids are more likely to experience negative mental health and academic outcomes.

The study, published in June by the Journal of American College Health, defined misuse as using a prescription opioid or stimulant not prescribed to that student. Students misusing prescription stimulants or opioids were found to be more likely to report negative outcomes in measures of:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Academic difficulty
• Chronic pain

The same students also reported higher rates of cannabis, nicotine and heavy alcohol use.

“It does suggest that using someone else’s prescription drug is not just a one-off behavior, because college students who have misused a stimulant or opioid are distinguishable from those who haven’t, on outcomes we considered,” David Kerr, a psychology professor in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts, said in a news release. “Looking at it another way, prescription drug misusers were more similar to illicit drug users than they were to non-users.”

Students misusing only prescription stimulants showed similar levels to illicit drug users in rates of heavy alcohol use, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and diagnosis of ADHD. Moreover, they fared worse than students using only illicit drugs in terms of academic difficulty. Students misusing prescription opioids, meanwhile, reported similar levels of depressive symptoms, anxiety and academic struggles compared to illicit drug users.

In most categories, students using both prescription and illicit drugs reported worse outcomes than those who misused only one of the prescription medications.

The Oregon State study was based on data from the 2015-16 National College Health Assessment, which includes self-reported measures of recent drug, alcohol and nicotine use for about 80,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 at four-year colleges and universities.