Le but de cette étude était d’explorer l’impact du burnout scolaire sur les habitudes de consommation d’alcool chez les adolescents, en particulier les consommations à risques, à savoir le binge drinking.

Trois cent trente-six lycéens d’âge moyen 16,56 ans (ET=0,68) de la seconde à la terminale ont participé à cette étude. Ils ont complété plusieurs questionnaires, à savoir : une fiche anamnestique, un questionnaire mesurant le burnout scolaire et un autre explorant les comportements d’alcoolisation.

Les résultats montrent que les garçons consomment plus souvent et en plus grandes quantités de l’alcool par rapport aux filles. La dimension du burnout « épuisement » prédit la consommation d’alcool chez les lycéens et en particulier chez les filles. De plus, les adolescents qui ont des habitudes de binge drinking ont des scores de burnout plus élevés au niveau des trois dimensions, spécifiquement chez les filles.

Par conséquent, le stress éprouvé par le contexte scolaire lorsque celui-ci est intense a une influence sur les comportements de consommation d’alcool chez les lycéens en particulier chez les filles.

The aim of this study was to explore the impact of school-related burnout symptoms. on alcohol consumption habits among adolescents. Alcohol consumption is rather common among adolescents. Indeed, recent French research (Spilka et al., 2015) has shown that in a sample of 17-year-old adolescents up to 89.3% declared at least one alcohol consumption experience over lifetime, 58.9% experienced drunkenness over the last year, and 48.8% declared binge drinking experiences over last month. In the meantime, high-school students are exposed to a high level of school-related stress, which could lead to school-related burnout (Salmela-Aro et al., 2009). Previous studies have shown that school-related burnout is associated with several addictive behaviors, such as tobacco use (Moncla, Walburg, Milhaes, 2014) cannabis consumption (Walburg, Moncla, Milhaes, 2015) or problematic Facebook use (Walburg, Milhaes, Moncla, 2016). Therefore, the aim of the present study was to explore weather school-related burnout could influence alcohol use behaviors among high-school students.

A sample of 336 high-school students participated in this study. The School Burnout Inventory (Salmela-Aro et al., 2009) validated in French by Meylan et al. (2015) and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test - AUDIT questionnaire (Saunders et al., 1993) French validation by Gache et al. (2005) exploring alcohol consumption habits, were completed. Socio-demographical data (i.e. age, gender, and school grade) were also gathered.

A Chi-square test showed that boys consume alcohol more frequently and have higher alcohol consumption rates. However, when alcohol consumptions are associated in a multiple regression model with school-related burnout, results are exclusively significant for girls. Indeed, the intensity of school-related burnout dimension “exhausting by school work” predicts alcohol dependency scores (β=0.37; P = 0.02). The model F (3.227)=10.64 explains 11.57% of the variance. Moreover, comparing school-related burnout scores between students with or without binge drinking habits with a Student t test, showed that girls with binge drinking habits have significantly higher school-related burnout scores on all three dimensions.

In line with previous studies, our findings suggest that school-related burnout impacts addictive behaviours among adolescents. In other words, when confronted to an important stressful school context, addictive behaviours such as alcohol consumption and binge drinking could represent an escape from a hostile reality. Prevention and treatment of adolescents with alcohol consumption should take into account the stress level engendered by the school environment.