New psychoactive substances in higher education: an overview of the current knowledge of university students

Resumo

Introduction: The university environment is often linked with the initiation or the establishment of substance use, including new psychoactive substances (NPS) (Rodríguez-Sáez et al., 2021). Thus, assessing higher education (HE) students' awareness, knowledge and perception of NPS may be a useful needs-assessment strategy to build educational programs oriented to current demands (Deligianni et al., 2017).

Objective: To characterise students' awareness, knowledge and perceptions of HE students about NPS, based on published data.

Methods: A state-of-the-art narrative review was conducted based on a bibliographic search exclusively on PubMed with the prompt (“new psychoactive substances” OR “novel psychoactive substances”) AND “education”, with a 10-year time limit (2015-April 2025). Inclusion criteria consisted of articles written in English that assessed HE students’ awareness, knowledge and perceptions on NPS. Papers which did not include HE students or focused on substances other than NPS were excluded. Hence, 4 papers were used. 

Results and discussion: The existing literature comprises surveys focused on HE students mainly from Europe, the UK, Serbia and Japan, with no results found regarding Portugal. Generally, most students are aware of NPS. Still, a lack of in-depth knowledge, particularly of the health risks of NPS, was consistent across all studies (Deligianni et al., 2017; Deligianni et al., 2020; Fuse-Nagase et al., 2015; Mijatović Jovin et al., 2022). Educational institutions showed to have a limited impact on NPS knowledge and use prevention (Deligianni et al., 2020). Informal information sources (Internet or peers) are often preferred; however, they may also disseminate misinformation and misconceptions (Deligianni et al., 2017; Deligianni et al., 2020; Mijatović Jovin et al., 2022). Indeed, lectures represent the primary information source of a minority of students, highlighting the insufficient training on NPS in the academic curricula (Mijatović Jovin et al., 2022).

Conclusions: Overall, despite the generalised NPS awareness, a considerable knowledge gap, namely on the specific harms, was identified, underscoring the importance of effective education to prevent NPS use, enhance students’ academic background and, ultimately, their professional abilities (Deligianni et al., 2017; Fuse-Nagase et al., 2015; Mijatović Jovin et al., 2022). Moreover, the Portuguese HE scenario is currently uncharacterised, which calls for future studies on this population.