Today is National Alcohol Screening Day, and more than 600 colleges in the U.S. will be holding free alcohol screenings on their campuses to help students identify any problems they may have with alcohol abuse. It’s a fantastic idea; after all, nearly 2,000 Americans ages 18 to 24 die each year from alcohol-related injuries. The annual screenings are hosted by a nonprofit called Screening for Mental Health, which advocates mental-health and substance-abuse resources to be made readily available to those who need it.
UF, however, is not participating, which is pretty surprising.
GatorWell Health Promotion Services offers great resources for students struggling with alcohol problems and students who know people struggling with alcohol. The school’s medical amnesty policy protects students from disciplinary action if they suspect a friend has alcohol poisoning or has overdosed on drugs and call 911. Counseling is available at no charge to students in the UF Counseling & Wellness Center, and GatorWell has educational information on its website about alcohol abuse.
However, we like the idea of the PR initiative that a National Alcohol Screening Day event would provide. Rather than pushing a single anti-alcohol-abuse idea, the anonymous screenings would be a way for mental-health providers to connect with students who may be at risk.
In fact, a screening day (or multiple screening days) may be the missing link in alcoholism prevention that UF needs. GatorWell offers proactive resources for stopping underage drinking and alcohol abuse, and the CWC offers solutions for people who’ve realized they have a problem. But how can the university help students identify the fact that they may have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol?
Because we’re immersed in a culture that normalizes extreme alcohol consumption, many of us have no way of knowing if our alcohol habits are unhealthy. Young people who are just becoming exposed to practically limitless amounts of alcohol need ways to determine whether or not they’re truly drinking responsibly and if habitual alcohol abuse is a symptom of a deeper problem.
That’s why anonymous screenings work. According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, screenings have become a “mainstay of today’s preventive health care.”
“Screening is not the same as diagnostic testing, which establishes a definite diagnosis of a disorder. Instead, screening is used to identify people who are likely to have a disorder, as determined by their responses to certain key questions,” the NIAAA websites states. “People with positive screening results may be advised to undergo more detailed diagnostic testing to definitively confirm or rule out the disorder.”
Anonymous screenings, then, offer a nonthreatening way for students to become more aware of their relationships with drinking.
We hope GatorWell will consider participating in future college National Alcohol Screening Days to raise awareness about alcohol-related mental health issues and direct at-risk students to the right resources to prevent further problems.
[A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 4/10/2014 under the headline "UF should observe National Alcohol Screening Day"]
