Many students are coming to campus with greater mental health challenges than a decade ago. Diagnoses of depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and others are becoming increasingly common. Therefore, a growing number of students have been prescribed medication to assist in addressing these issues. Other students may possess a medical prescription for painkillers due to injury or accident.
Many students have relatively easy access to prescription drugs compared to the past.
According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, more and more of the 57 million prescriptions written annually are being given to young adults. Better insurance coverage also provides for low cost access. In spite of the federal warning on every prescription bottle forbidding the transfer of a prescription to another person, some students acquire prescription drugs for recreational use. As the April 2000 death of a University of Florida sophomore indicates, misuse of prescribed medications can have fatal consequences. Matthew Kaminer was given a single 80-milligram tablet of Oxycontin, a key ingredient in Percocet, by a friend.