Students Who Go to Private Schools Are More Likely to Suffer Drug and Alcohol Problems, According to Study
A new research found that students who live in comfortable surroundings and attend elite schools are at a higher risk of ending up with drug and alcohol problems later in life than their less affluent peers. These "privileged" youngsters will particularly turn to marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy.
Experts at Arizona State University conducted a study focused on the suburban youth in affluent communities in New England. They assessed the participants as high school seniors and then again annually across four years of college, and again from the age of 23 to 27. They found alarmingly high rates of substance abuse by the time they became young adults.
More specifically, girls from top schools are three times more likely to become addicted to substances or drink in early adulthood than their less privileged peers while the risk is twice for boys from the same background compared to their poorer counterparts. Oddly enough, these problems will manifest even if the students perform "exceedingly well" in class and are "highly regarded" by their teachers.
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Study leader Prof. Suniya Luthar suggested that part of the reason for this is that wealthy students face enormous pressure to achieve. They also tend to abide by a "work hard, play hard" mentality. And since rich kids have more money, they could afford to buy alcohol and drugs, and obtain fake IDs.
On the part of parents, they can be lulled into a false sense of security that their kids are performing well in school without knowing the underlying issues. Luthar blames the highly competitive environment in pressure-cooker, high achieving schools that push students to "self-medicate."
This problem of growing up wealthy and reckless has been detected for quite some time that sociologists have coined a term for it: "affluenza." To avoid this syndrome, psychologists are urging wealthy parents to inculcate values in their kids and act as role models.
