During freshman orientation at Syracuse University, students are taught about alcohol, sexual assault and drug abuse. There’s even an interactive online program, Think About It, that has simulations of different experiences related to underage drinking and drug use and asks students to answer questions and think about consequences.

But the misuse of stimulants, such as Adderall, is often ignored.

SU associate professors of psychology, Kevin Antshel, Stephen Maisto and Aesoon Park, are working to alleviate this problem. They have developed a “primary prevention intervention” and want it to be presented to freshmen during the first few weeks of school. It’s called a primary intervention because it targets students who haven’t begun to misuse stimulants, Maisto said.

Antshel said the goal isn’t to educate students about stimulant misuse. Research shows that a majority of college students already know the risks, he said. Rather, the project aims to teach students how to combat the reasons they use stimulants in the first place, such as procrastination and stress.

Phase one of the two-part project is nearing completion. The prevention intervention prototype will be presented to focus groups, who will provide feedback in a couple of weeks. The presentation will be 75 minutes in length, Antshel said, adding that it is “meant to provide them with personalized feedback about expectations that they have about stimulants.”

The lecture will introduce academic productivity skills and ways to deal with procrastination and reduce stress because stimulants are primarily used to help with grades. The professors said they believe if they teach freshmen, the students will be less likely to use stimulants throughout all four years of college.

Recruited peer interventionists, juniors and seniors at SU, will be leading the intervention groups. Each of the five peers will go through a 10- to 12-hour training session and will be responsible for groups of five to six students, Maisto said.

Maisto added that because this project is being completed with grant money, it is currently happening at a much smaller scale than it will be in the future. If this testing of the intervention proves to be successful, then the program will be expanded and the number of peers will increase, Maisto said.

The grant came from Shire, which is the pharmaceutical company that manufactures Adderall. The two-year grant will allow the prevention intervention to be conducted for three consecutive semesters, starting in the spring. The program will be executed in the first two weeks of each semester but will track group members through final exams of that semester to measure the rate of stimulant misuse.

Antshel said when the professors contacted Shire, company officials said it was the first proposal they had ever received on the topic. The first freshman class that will experience the prevention intervention is the class of 2020, and it will be conducted next semester.

In the future, Antshel said the program could be expanded to individuals who are at risk for stimulant abuse or who have already started to misuse it.

“We don’t have any reason to think there is a bigger issue here (at SU) than it is anywhere else,” he said, adding that he hopes in 10 years stimulant misuse will be included in freshman orientation just like alcohol abuse and sexual assault.

Published on November 10, 2016 at 1:46 pm

Contact Sandhya: ssiyer@syr.edu