Comorbid Depression and Substance Use on College Campuses: A Review

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201214.593How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Comorbid Disorders, Substance Use, Depression, College Students, Mental Health, Harm Reduction

Abstract

Mental health problems on college campuses have been rising in recent years, with universities unable to meet the high need for services. Especially problematic are comorbid disorders. Individuals diagnosed with two or more disorders often experience worse outcomes than those diagnosed with a single disorder. Depression and substance use disorder (SUD)care among the most common mental health problems in college students. Comorbid SUD and depression are especially common, and is associated with poor academic performance, dropout, and even suicide. There are three theories of the etiology of comorbid conditions: depression can cause SUD (e.g., I am depressed, so I use substances to cope, and develop an SUD because of my depression); SUD can cause depression (chronic substance use leads to social, psychological, or neurological deficits that lead to depression); or SUD and depression are two manifestations of an underlying neurological deficit (e.g., I have a neurological deficit that causes both my SUD and my depression). In the present review, I evaluate the empirical evidence supporting each of these theories. I then discuss the current treatment practices used to treat depression and SUD in college students, as well as harm-reduction techniques to mitigate the harms associated with substance use. I also discuss the clinical implications of these etiological theories on the treatment of comorbid SUD and depression in college students.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhixing Sun
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/12/16
TI  - Comorbid Depression and Substance Use on College Campuses: A Review
BT  - Proceedings of the 2020 3rd International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 704
EP  - 711
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201214.593
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201214.593
ID  - Sun2020
ER  -