Mixed use of psychiatric drugs and alcohol by Finnish university students participating in a health screening.

Objective: To obtain descriptive data on the mixed use of psychiatric drugs and alcohol. The difference and associations of health and mental risk factors between mixed users and others were also studied.
Design: A self-administered questionnaire as part of a general health screening.
Setting: First-year university students enrolled in the Finnish Student Health Service in Helsinki. Foreign students and those aged 30 years or over were excluded.
Subjects: 3,836 students were invited. The participation rate was 73.2% for the female and 53.2% for the male students.
Results: The mixed use of psychiatric drugs and alcohol with the aim of getting high, at least once, was reported by 3.6% of the female and 3.1% of the male students. However, only 1.0% had tried this mixed use more than once. Mixed users were more often smokers, heavy drinkers, or users of cannabis or heavy drugs. Male students tended to be mixed users because of anxiety, low self-esteem, and fears. Depression, stress, and sensation seeking were associated with mixed use in female students.
Conclusions: Mixed use of psychiatric drugs and alcohol by young Finnish university students is still rare. There is a strong accumulation of other addictive behaviours among mixed users. Extra-personal reasons for mixed use were more prevalent among female students, and intra-personal reasons among male students.