Literature Review Essays - Drinking Culture, Health, Neuroscience

Literature Review Kerrice Lawrence St. Mary's University College Most philosophers believe that behaviors are not inborn, but rather, developed by means of habits. Teaching imparts virtue , and it is believed that every child who is taught, including the bad ones, would be better than those that have never been taught. Bad behavior is associated with lack of education and low social status , while c ollege attendance is mos tly associated with self-improvement and upward mobility ( Parker-Pope, 2008) . However, f indings from different research studies tell a different story . Surprisingly, university/ college students are more likely to behave badly than their non-college-attending peers ( Parker-Pope, 2008) . P aper will give a critical review of research studies on the bad behaviors such as suicide, drugs, alcohol, health risks, and cannabis use of university/college students . Research by A r ria, O'Gr ady, Caldeira, Vincent, Wilcox and Wish (2009) states that s uicide is the second leading killer of college students and the third leading killer of youths aged 1 5 to 24 years. It accounts for approximately 1,100 student deaths annually (Arria et al., 2009). Suicide ideation is believed to be an important precursor to completed suicide and attempted suicide cases . The research was aimed at estimating the predictive ability of various suspected risk factors, their interactions on suicide ideation among college students , and the intervention . Specifically, the study's goals were to estimate the prevalence of suicide ideation among college students, and to develop a multi-dimensional explanatory model that explains college suicide ideati on. The study employed a face-to-face interview method. The results showed that depression is a clear risk factor for suicide ideation. Lack of social support was also a prominent risk factor for suicide ideation among college students. The study also found that parent-student relationships were very significant in suicide ideation among college students. The likelihood of suicide ideation increased with h igher levels of conflict with parents. Preventive factors identified included parental supervision, spending time together as a family, and family cohesion . The risk factors identified by most students included poor communication between students and parents, low parental approval, low perceived support, and family dysfunction. Besides family conflict, suicide ideation among college students is linked to lower family cohesion , higher emotional unavailab ility of the parents, and lower security in the students' current attachments to parents (Arria et al., 2009) . The study also linked suicide ideation among college students to social support , affective dysregulation, and other fac tors such as alcohol use disorders (AUD). This study, however, was limited to a single public university , thus the results may not be generalized to all students in other areas or i n small private universities or colleges. Besides, the study did not consider several factors that contribute to suicide ideation among college students. Such factors include stressful life events like troubled relationships and other personal, p rofessional, and academic problems , financial struggles, and family problems . Psychological disorders like anxiety have also been linked to suicide ideation among college students, though not included in this study. For most students, transition between adolescence and adulthood occurs during the university or college life. This life is characterized by high levels of stress as the students try to adjust to increased academic demands and new social environments. The social support networks also undergo drastic changes during this per iod, such as the separation from home and parents. P revious study by Arria et al. (2 009) used the interview method while Neighbors, Lee, Lewis, Fossos and Larimer (2007) use the survey approach to talk about bad behaviors . Neighbors et al. (2007) illustrated that h eavy alcohol consumption is a prevalent and problematic behavior among college students . About 40%-45% of college students in U.S. engage in heavy episodic drinking. The effects of heavy drinking among college students include academic problems, criminal behavior, injuries, unwanted sexual experiences, and deaths. This study was aimed at evaluating the relati ve contribution of social norms, drinking motives, demographics, and alcohol expectancies in predicting the alcohol consumption and the related problems among the heavy-drinking college students (Neighbors et al., 2007). The study employed a screening