Youngsters with a history of binge drinking are more likely to reduce the habit after receiving text messages subsequent to their visits to the emergency department, a new research shows.
For the study, the researchers enrolled 765 young adult binge drinkers. They were divided into three groups. First group received text messages prompting them to respond to drinking-related queries and they were also given a feedback .
The second group received only text message queries about their drinking and the third group received no text messages.
Researchers had customized the feedback of the first group to strengthen their low-risk drinking plan or goal and to reflect on their decision if they had no goals or plans for decreasing their drinking habit.
The results showed that the group receiving both text message queries and feedback decreased its self-reported binge drinking days by 51 percent and decreased the number of self-reported drinks per day by 31 percent. The groups that received only text messages or no text messages increased the number of binge drinking days.
"Each day in the U.S., more than 50,000 adults ages 18 to 24 visit ERs and up to half have hazardous alcohol use patterns," said Brian Suffoletto, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pittsburgh, Pa. "More than a third of them report alcohol abuse or dependence. The emergency department provides a unique setting to screen young adults for drinking problems and to engage with them via their preferred mode of communication to reduce future use," Suffoletto said in a press release.
"Illicit drugs and opiates grab all the headlines, but alcohol remains the fourth leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.," said Dr. Suffoletto. "If we can intervene in a meaningful way in the health and habits of people when they are young, we could make a real dent in that tragic statistic. Alcohol may bring them to the ER, but we can do our part to keep them from becoming repeat visitors."
The study, 'A Text Message Alcohol Intervention for Young Adult Emergency Department Patients: A Randomized Clinical Trial', was published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
