Stephanie Lanza, professor of biobehavioral health and Edna P. Bennett Faculty Fellow in Prevention Research, studied the topic with Danny Rahal and Kristin Perry when both were postdoctoral trainees in the Penn State Prevention and Methodology Training Program. The researchers examined the ways that both positive and negative aspects of mental health can contribute to the risk of binge drinking, cannabis use and nicotine use.

“In 2021, students at many universities were returning to campus after the COVID-19 shutdown — and some students were attending in-person college classes for the first time,” said Rahal, lead author of this research and assistant professor of psychology at University of California Santa Cruz. “Data from that time indicated that many students felt disconnected from their school. Universities wanted to foster a sense of connectedness among their students for many good reasons, but we wanted to know if there was something positive — specifically a sense of belonging — that is related to substance use. Our study showed that feeling connected to one’s university is associated with higher rates of substance use.”

The researchers examined data from 4,018 university students collected during the 2022-23 school year. Participants answered questions about substance use, their sense of belonging at their school and their mental health — specifically about anxiety, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, flourishing in life and confidence in their academic success.

A statistical modeling technique called latent profile analysis allowed the researchers to simultaneously account for all these measures by combining them to identify five profiles of student mental health. In this study, a student was considered to have good mental health if they had lower levels of stress, depressive symptoms and anxiety, as well as higher flourishing and academic confidence than their peers.

The researchers found that students with average or good mental health were more likely to have engaged in binge drinking in the past month if they felt connected to their university than if they did not feel that connection.

The researchers said this does not mean that connectedness is bad for students to experience; rather, the results are nuanced.

“We want to cultivate connectedness among students,” said Perry, assistant professor of family and human services at University of Oregon. “Connectedness gets them involved. It can be a really powerful protective factor against negative mental health outcomes and can help keep students in school. But connectedness at school can go hand in hand with binge drinking if there is a culture of drinking at the school.”

Though the researchers said they expected these results about drinking, they were surprised to learn that students with poor mental health who felt connected to their university were more likely to use non-vaped tobacco products than students with poor mental health who did not feel connected to their university. The results around cannabis were less conclusive, but the researchers said the trend was clear.

“Generally, students who felt connected to their university were more likely to use substances than disconnected students with the same level of mental health,” Rahal said.

While a sense of belonging was related to substance use, it could also be part of the solution, according to the researchers.

“Cultivating belonging for all students is an important way that universities can embrace diversity and help all students thrive,” Lanza said.

Though drinking is common on university campuses, many students believe that it is far more common than it is, the researchers explained. In this dataset, slightly fewer than one-third of students reported binge drinking in the last month. Despite the fact that two-thirds of students had not engaged in binge drinking, the researchers also found that students believed a typical student consumed three to five drinks multiple times each week. The researchers said this disconnect between perception and reality points to an opportunity to change the culture — by creating ample opportunities for all students to socially engage and participate in alcohol-free environments — so that alcohol feels less central to student life.

Minoritized college students, in particular, often face messages that make them feel unwelcome based on their race, gender, socioeconomic status or other factors, according to the researchers.

“We cannot expect students to stay enrolled unless they are engaged with the campus community,” Lanza continued. “If universities lose students from a specific group, the campus becomes less diverse, and the entire university community becomes less rich. Additionally, when members of those groups leave school, they miss educational opportunities and the earning potential that comes with a college degree. By providing all students with diverse opportunities to build a real sense of belonging at their universities, we can improve campus life while putting people on the path to a healthier life.”

The National Institute on Drug Abuse and Penn State funded this research.