The Effect of Self-Esteem on College Student Drinking

Team Members: Gaurav Kumar Meena, Bantu Lal Meena, Ravi Kumar Meena, Harna Singh (IIT Patna)

Drinking at college has become a ritual that students often see as an integral part of their higher education experience. Many students come to college with established drinking habits, and the college environment can exacerbate the problem. Many college alcohol problems are related to binge drinking. Certain aspects of college life such as unstructured time, the widespread availability of alcohol, inconsistent enforcement of underage drinking laws, and limited interactions with parents and other adults, can intensify the problem. Here, we are correlating self-esteem with college student drinking. Low self-esteem lead to excessive drinking. Self-esteem describe as confidence and satisfaction that the individual has with their life.

Using alcohol and drugs to escape their feelings of low self-esteem only leads to misery and addiction. Most of college student start drinking alcohol while having stress due to their academic performance, relationship problem, influenced by friends, less restriction in college environment, family problems. The self-esteem is also effected in many perspective due to drink alcohol. Alcohol drinking is major substance to escape the low self-esteem feeling in college students. There are following cause of low self-esteem which lead to alcohol drinking:-

•  Students who fail to meet parental standards.
• Students who fail to meet peer-group standards.
• Belonging to a family or social group that other people are prejudiced towards.
• An absence of praise, warmth, affection or interest.
•  Failure at work or school.
• Childhood abuse.
• Financial problems.
• The end of an important relationship.

Many college students who drink heavily experience negative short-term health consequences such as hangovers, nausea, and vomiting. It also effect college student behavior. Excessive drinking is also a contributor to fights and interpersonal and sexual violence. College student drinking can affect their self-esteem in many ways in which their behavior reflect.  People with low self-esteem often end up in abusive relationships. This is because they can inwardly feel like such relationships are all they deserve.

There are many consequences of college student drinking which are as follows according to NIAAA (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism):-

• Death
• Injury
• Assault
• Sexual abuse
• Unsafe sex
• Academic problem
• Alcohol abuse and dependence
• Drunk driving

Results:-

To study the effect of self-esteem on college student drinking, we organised a survey based on questionnaires which include “The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT)” and Rosenberg self-esteem scale to measure self-esteem. There is insignificant data, we got from the survey. The very low self-esteem, low self-esteem, moderate self-esteem, high self-esteem and very high self-esteem are found 2%, 9%, 68%, 17% and 4% respectively. The self-esteem’s scores median and standard deviation are determined 18 and 4.5 respectively from the responses. The responses of alcohol are also analysed. College students who start drinking age blow 16 years, age 16-18, age 18-21, and age 21+ are found 12%, 18%, 49% and 21% respectively. There is no significant correlation found between self-esteem and alcohol drinking. However, the severity of alcohol use was significantly correlated with starting age of drinking (0.95) and frequency of drinking (0.87). There are many student who start drinking under 16 years old. The percentage of those student is 12%. This is very severe problem.