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Parenting, high-risk drinking
topic of opening RIA lecture

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By KATHLEEN WEAVER
Published: October 6, 2011

Advances in parenting research related to college drinking. Hmm. We drank in college; it didn’t hurt us (did it?). Do we really need more parenting tips by the time they’re 18 and they’re on their way out the door to college?

Rob Turrisi says that’s a conversation that needs to happen early on.

Turrisi, a faculty member at Pennsylvania State University, will discuss “Advances in Parenting Research to Reduce High Risk Drinking and Problems in College Students” in the first presentation in the Research Institute on Addictions’ fall seminar series.

The four-part series, which is free and open to the public, is held on designated Fridays at 10 a.m. on the first floor of the RIA building at 1021 Main St. at Goodrich on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Turrisi’s talk on Oct. 14 will focus on improving parent-teen communication and relationships in order to reduce the risks of drinking in college—risks, he says, that include drinking-related consequences and secondary consequences, such as other drug use, risky sex or getting into a car with someone else who’s been drinking.

Turrisi is a professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State and director of the Prevention Research Center Alcohol and Skin Cancer Projects. His research focus includes behavioral decision-making, adolescent health issues and family relationships. He also is working to develop interventions to prevent substance abuse and cancer.

“The problem of college student drinking is everywhere,” Turrisi says. “I have conducted research in Pennsylvania and New York, but the analyses I will present are on a national level. There is no evidence that things are different in New York or Pennsylvania.”

College students drink, but drinking that leads to harm is called high-risk drinking, and many people consider any form of underage drinking high-risk, according to Turrisi. Another behavior considered risky is heavy episodic drinking—five or more drinks in a two-hour period for males and four or more for females, he says.

“The data suggest that 40 percent to 50 percent of college students engage in frequent, heavy episodic drinking and as many as 80 percent engage in some form of high-risk drinking during a given year,” Turrisi says. “My research has included the full range of college students, but my early intervention trials have primarily focused on 18-20-year-olds.”

Turrisi will report on his research results, including a community-based, zero-tolerance project in two college towns. “I wish we had all the answers,” he says.

The remaining lectures in the RIA series include:

  • Oct. 28: “Addiction Treatment Outcomes, Process and Change,” Patrick M. Flynn, professor, Saul B. Sells Chair in Psychology and director of the Institute of Behavioral Research, Texas Christian University. Flynn is principal investigator on a five-year National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded project that is adapting, adopting and implementing an intervention in therapeutic communities for adolescents. He also is a principal investigator on a clinical trial of an augmented test, treat, link and retain model for North Carolina and Texas prisoners.
  • Nov. 4: “Determinants of Drug Preference in Humans,” Harriet de Wit, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago. Her current research includes studies on the effects of drugs on emotional processing, evaluations of different behavioral measures of impulsivity and studies on genetic variation in acute responses to stimulant drugs.
  • Dec. 2: “HIV Risk Behaviors among Women in Substance Abuse Treatment: Correlates and Predictors of Change,” Kurt H. Dermen, RIA senior research scientist. Dermen’s primary research interests include the study of individual, social and contextual factors that contribute to risky sexual behavior in alcohol- and other drug-abusing populations, as well as the development and evaluation of motivational and behavioral interventions for substance abuse treatment, health-risk reduction and health promotion.

For more information about the lecture series, visit the RIA website or call 887-2566.