Consumo de álcool entre universitários: uma revisão de literatura.

Abstract

Alcohol consumption is present in many cultures and is well tolerated in society. Compared with the general population and high school students, several epidemiological studies conducted in Brazil point to a high prevalence of alcohol consumption among college students. The university environment is composed mostly for young people who adopt behaviors, customs and choices that can affect their physical and mental health throughout their lives. The objective of this work is to understand the use of alcohol among university students from the integration of data found in the literature. The integrative review methodology was adopted to synthesize knowledge present in the current literature in order to verify the characteristics of alcohol consumption among university students. To search the articles, we used the database of the Virtual Health Library with the descriptors alcoholism and alcohol consumption in college and students. The filters used were: articles available (free), published in the time span of 20122018, written in Portuguese and Spanish. After the articles were selected, six studies were explored and analyzed critically. A high prevalence of alcohol consumption was found among university students. There was an increase in the use of this substance after admission to university, being higher among male students. The practice of episodic heavy drinking is a common behavior among university students, but only a minority has a diagnosis of alcohol dependence. Given this, it is important to develop public policies that address this problem, however, more studies with methodologies with higher levels of evidence are necessary to study this phenomenon.