Transgender college freshmen drink more, experience more blackouts, study shows
The 989 students who identified as transgender were also more likely than their cisgender peers to cite stress reduction, relationship troubles or the sedating effects of alcohol as motivation for drinking, according to an analysis of the survey publishing March 21 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research . The results suggest transgender college students may be particularly vulnerable to alcohol abuse, which can negatively affect their academic standing and their physical health, said Scott Swartzwelder, Ph.D., senior author of the analysis and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. "For people who work with this age group, it's important to understand that these students are drinking at levels that are quite dangerous," Swartzwelder said. "A blackout is a serious neurological event that occurs when you drink enough to impair the parts of your brain that encode new memo...