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The epidemiology of and clinical experience with college students who make suicide attempts converge upon a glaring conclusion: that suicidal students are now paying a high price for experimentation with alcohol and other intoxicating substances. A significant proportion of suicidal students are abusers of psychoactive substances. Their numbers may be small in terms of total college and university populations, but their personal sacrifice and group impact is great. The first section of this chapter reviews the epidemiology of college student suicide and substance use disorder. One objective of the review is to help college clinicians and administrators examine the suicide-substance use relationship from multiple frames of reference. Data from a new survey of the relationship between substance use and suicidality in students are presented. The second section introduces selected issues on the important topic of substance use and suicide prevention. The third section deals with specific clinical aspects of the student with suicidal thinking and the therapy of the post-suicide attempter who uses or has intoxicating substances.
Timothy M. Rivinus (Thu,) studied this question.