Text messages can help reduce binge drinking in youth

Washington: Text messages can motivate young adults to reduce their binge drinking by more than 50 per cent, according to a new study.

Young adults who screened positive for a history of hazardous or binge drinking reduced their binge drinking by more than 50 per cent after receiving mobile phone text messages following a visit to the emergency department, the study found.

"Each day in the US, more than 50,000 adults ages 18 to 24 visit ERs and up to half have hazardous alcohol use patterns," said Brian Suffoletto, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pittsburgh.

"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.

Researchers enrolled 765 young adult emergency patients with a history of hazardous drinking in the study.

For 12 weeks, one-third received text messages prompting them to respond to drinking-related queries and received text messages in return offering feedback on their answers.

The feedback was tailored to strengthen their low-risk drinking plan or goal or to promote reflection on either their drinking plan or their decision not to set a low-risk goal.

One-third received only text message queries about their drinking and one-third received no text messages.

The group receiving both text message queries and feedback decreased their self-reported binge drinking days by 51 per cent and decreased the number of self-reported drinks per day by 31 per cent.

The groups that received only text messages or no text messages increased the number of binge drinking days. Hazardous drinking is defined as five or more drinks per day for men and four or more drinks per day for women.

"Illicit drugs and opiates grab all the headlines, but alcohol remains the fourth leading cause of preventable death in the US," said 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," said Suffoletto. The study was published in Annals of Emergency Medicine.