Extent of alcohol use and mental health (depressive and post- traumatic stress disorder symptoms) in undergraduate university students from 26 low-, middle- and high-income countries

South African Journal of Psychiatry

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Extent of alcohol use and mental health (depressive and post- traumatic stress disorder symptoms) in undergraduate university students from 26 low-, middle- and high-income countries
 
Creator Peltzer, Karl Pengpid, S
 
Subject Psychiatry; Public health Variation in alcohol use; depressive symptoms; PTSD symptoms; university students; multicountry Alcohol use
Description Objective. To estimate if there is a non-linear association between varying levels of alcohol use and poor mental health (depressive and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms) in university students from low-, middle- and high-income countries. Methods. Using anonymous questionnaires, data were collected from 19 238 undergraduate university students (mean age 20.8; standard deviation (SD) 2.8) from 27 universities in 26 countries across Asia, Africa and the Americas. Alcohol use was assessed in terms of number of drinks in the past 2 weeks and number of drinks per episode, and measures of depression and PTSD symptoms were administered. Results. The proportion of students with elevated depression scores was 12.3%, 16.9%, and 11.5% for non-drinkers, moderate drinkers, and heavy drinkers, respectively, while the proportion of students with high PTSD symptoms was 20.6%, 20.4% and 23.1% for non-drinkers, moderate drinkers, and heavy drinkers, respectively. Logistic regression found that non-drinkers and heavy drinkers had a lower odds than moderate drinkers to have severe depression, after adjusting for sociodemographic variables, social support and subjective health status. Further, heavy, more frequent drinkers and more frequent binge drinkers had a higher odds to have elevated PTSD symptoms than moderate and non-drinkers, after adjusting for sociodemographic variables, social support and subjective health status. Conclusion. The results suggest a reverse U-shaped association between recent alcohol use volume and frequency and depressive symptoms (unlike that previously identified), and a J-shaped association between binge drinking frequency and depressive symptoms and alcohol use and PTSD symptoms.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2015-05-01
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Cross-sectional survey
Format application/pdf application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v21i2.662
 
Source South African Journal of Psychiatry; Vol 21, No 2 (2015); 5 pages 2078-6786 1608-9685
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/662/612 https://sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/article/view/662/539
 
Coverage 26 countries Chronological 19 238 undergraduate university students
Rights Copyright (c) 2015 Karl Peltzer, S Pengpid https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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