Associations between Illicit Drug Use, Academic Performance and Self Esteem Among College Students

Abstract

Many college students place a high value on their grade-point average (GPA) as a representative of their academic performance. Due to this pressure to achieve, students often feel overwhelmed to the point where it starts affecting their mental wellbeing. Several students resort to study aids to enhance their GPA, while others rely on illicit drug use to cope with the stress. Reports have associated GPAs with a sense of self-worth, suggesting that students with low GPAs presumably have lower self-esteem. In addition, self-worth is closely associated with mental health and drug use. However, it is unknown how these factors interact. Thus, the purpose of the study is to assess the association between drug use, mental distress and GPA in relation to self-esteem. This study included 702 undergraduate college students from different universities across the United States. The anonymous survey, which was distributed online via Google Forms, assessed self-reported drug usage, and different aspects of mental distress were assessed by the Kessler Psychological Distress Scales (K10+) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). The data were analyzed in SPSS, Version 28.0, using a Pearson’s correlation coeffcient. The results suggest that GPA is correlated with traits of self-esteem (p<0.01), such as self-rated mental wellbeing, feelings of worthlessness, and hopelessness. Additionally, GPA is correlated with the belief that they are able to effectively cope with troubles in their lives (p<0.01), and is negatively correlated with loss of control (p<0.05). Feelings of distress and lack of control may cause students to turn to negative coping strategies such as abusing substances such as alcohol (p<0.01), marijuana (p<0.01), cocaine (p<0.01), and illicit ADHD medication use (p<0.05), all of which were found to be negatively correlated with GPA. Our results propose a possible cyclic relationship between illicit drug use as coping mechanisms, GPA, and not only low self-worth but different aspects of mental distress. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.