Stephanie Lanza, professor of biobehavioral health and Edna P. Bennett Faculty Fellow in Prevention Research, studied the topic with Danny Rahal and Kristin Perry when both were postdoctoral trainees in the Penn State Prevention and Methodology Training Program. The researchers examined the ways that both positive and negative aspects of mental health can contribute to the risk of binge drinking, cannabis use and nicotine use.
“In 2021, students at many universities were returning to campus after the COVID-19 shutdown — and some students were attending in-person college classes for the first time,” said Rahal, lead author of this research and assistant professor of psychology at University of California Santa Cruz. “Data from that time indicated that many students felt disconnected from their school. Universities wanted to foster a sense of connectedness among their students for many good reasons, but we wanted to know if there was something positive — specifically a sense of belonging — that is related to substance use. Our study showed that feeling connected to one’s university is associated with higher rates of substance use.”
The researchers examined data from 4,018 university students collected during the 2022-23 school year. Participants answered questions about substance use, their sense of belonging at their school and their mental health — specifically about anxiety, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, flourishing in life and confidence in their academic success.
A statistical modeling technique called latent profile analysis allowed the researchers to simultaneously account for all these measures by combining them to identify five profiles of student mental health. In this study, a student was considered to have good mental health if they had lower levels of stress, depressive symptoms and anxiety, as well as higher flourishing and academic confidence than their peers.
The researchers found that students with average or good mental health were more likely to have engaged in binge drinking in the past month if they felt connected to their university than if they did not feel that connection.
The researchers said this does not mean that connectedness is bad for students to experience; rather, the results are nuanced.