 | | | | Related Healthscout Videos | |
|
THURSDAY, April 27 (HealthDay News) -- New research into the effects of Sept. 11, 2001, suggests that alcohol served as a refuge for some New York City teens who were directly exposed to the terrorist attacks.
About 1 in 10 teens reported drinking more after 9/11.
Text Continues Below
The researchers cautioned that there are plenty of unanswered questions about the interaction between stress and substance abuse in the wake of 9/11. Still, the study findings do offer a portrait of a community of people whose reaction to the disaster has largely been unchronicled.
"All the evidence that we collected says that, yes, kids were affected and had reactions related to the attacks," said study co-author Cristiane S. Duarte, an assistant professor at Columbia University Medical Center's Division of Child and Adolescent Psychology.
Duarte and her colleagues surveyed 2,731 New York City public high school students six months after Sept. 11, 2001. The students were asked about their drinking and smoking habits in the wake of the attacks.
Nearly 11 percent said they'd been drinking more since 9/11. The students were 1.8 times more likely to report heavier drinking if they'd been directly exposed to the attacks -- if they had been in the World Trade Center area at the time, watched them closely on television or had a family member who was involved.
The study findings appear in the May issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Duarte cautioned that the drinking statistics aren't as reliable as they could be because the researchers didn't survey the teens before 9/11.
The researchers also found a "marginally significant" link between increased smoking and signs that the teens suffered from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. But there was no link between higher rates of smoking and direct exposure to the attacks.
Page: 1 | 2 | Next >>
|
.gif)
