The worst recipe for violence … just mix alcohol and Valium
By admin | February 8, 2010
Mixing Valium and alcohol is the most potent mix for committing violent offences, according to new research commissioned by the Scottish Prison Service.
A study of 16 and 17-year-old boys at Polmont Young Offenders Institution found that many of them had committed their offences because they had taken diazepam and alcohol together.
They said it had the added advantage of making them forget the violence they had instigated.
It also found that almost three quarters of the young men interviewed had some experience of the Children’s Hearing System and the common view was that it made “little or no difference” to their offending.
The report states: “There was a consistent view that alcohol, and alcohol in conjunction with diazepam, was a significant contributor to offending. A number identified that the particular combination of alcohol and diazepam had led to them committing violent offences about which they had no recollection.”
It suggests, too, that for some young men diazepam is becoming more of a problem than heroin.
It was also suggested that there may be a need for awareness raising among GPs about the issues posed by prescribing diazepam to some young people, and particularly about the ways in which the drug is being used by young people.
It was noted by the drug support charity Phoenix that their workers see more young offenders with problems relating to diazepam than those with problems relating to heroin.
“It is clear that the combination of alcohol and diazepam was a factor in some of the most serious violent offences reported in this research, with the added factor that none of the young offenders concerned had any memory of the incident,” the report adds.
One young offender said: “I knew that drinking and diazepam made me want to fight, but it didn’t make a difference”.
Another noted that this combination “made me feel invincible”.
The study conducted by Sheila Reid and Brian Henderson of Reid Howie Associates, recommends that: “At a national and local level, the Scottish Government could consider carrying out work designed to educate young people about the risks of alcohol-related violence, and particularly about mixing alcohol and diazepam.”
The researchers found that 16 and 17 year olds only made up a quarter of Polmont’s overall population but had committed a disproportionately high level of violent offences.
They interviewed more than 35 young offenders and found that many of them felt “no-one had bothered” with them at school. More than 90% of the young offenders interviewed said most of their friends were also involved in offending and around a quarter blamed their friends for their criminal behaviour. Some had been in gangs.
Only a quarter had participated in education programmes at Polmont.
Dr Alasdair Forsyth, of the Glasgow Centre for the Study of Violence at Glasgow Caledonian, said: “One of my greatest concerns is that Valium’s half life is 100 hours so you could take it on Wednesday and go out on Friday and it is still in their system. A lot of prisoners say that mixing Valium and alcohol makes them violent.
“There is so much work on drug and alcohol education but Valium is largely ignored.
“It is a Class C drug yet it is far worse than Ecstasy, particularly when mixed with alcohol.”
source: http://www.heraldscotland.com
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Adults no help to teenage drinkers
By admin | February 7, 2010
What would you do?
A 16-year-old comes up to you and asks for a little help. He and his friends are bored and just want to have a little fun that night.
He asks you to buy booze.
Got a problem with that?
The Pittsfield Prevention Partnership says you should, but not everyone does. And that’s why the group recruited three teenagers to ask adults that same question Thursday night outside Nichols Package Store on Wahconah Street.
Michelle Messana, 17, of Lenox High School, and Nicole Akramoff, 15, and Max Pastore, 17, both of St. Joseph’s High School, took turns asking approaching customers this question: “Excuse me, I’m not old enough to buy anything here. If I gave you money, would you mind buying a six-pack for me?”
Karen Cole, Berkshire United Way PPP coordinator, said most of the few dozen adults who were asked declined to help. Some of them reprimanded the youths, and a few said they would help the teens out, “If there weren’t so many cars around.”
Only one man agreed to help.
The teens eventually told the people they were conducting a survey for the PPP and handed the adults a card with information listing the penalties for providing alcohol to minors, which include arrest, fines up to $2,000 and imprisonment up to six months.
Cole, PPP member Jackie Elliot and an undercover Pittsfield police officer waited in a car in the parking lot to make sure everything went smoothly.
Cole said the survey was part of a partnership with MADD Massachusetts, which has conducted these surveys in other parts of the state.
“We did this as a chance to educate the public on the laws,” Cole said. “I think it should make a lot of people think twice, which should ultimately save lives.”
The teens selected to help out are from the district attorney’s youth advisory board.
Messana, a junior, said she was nervous at first when she approached the adults.
“But it was definitely an interesting learning experience,” she said. “Some of the people got really mad, but then their attitudes changed when we told them this was just a survey.
“Alcohol can really screw up young kid’s lives,” she said.” They make bad decisions, and if they get behind the wheel, it can be horrible.”
The PPP is a group of residents, parents and community leaders that are targeting substance abuse among youths and hoping to educate the population on the negative effects of alcohol and drugs.
Cole said similar surveys will be conducted in the future. In December, members of the PPP and 15 area high school students visited liquor stores to attach stickers on drinks that read: “Hey you, did you know it’s illegal to sell alcohol to minors?”
A few months before that they sent 21-year-olds to 70 bars, restaurants and package stores in Pittsfield to see if they were carded. Cole said 87 percent of the establishments asked for ID.
Nichols owner Greg Babich supports the work of the PPP and gave the OK for the teens to conduct Thursday’s survey outside his store.
“We take this very seriously here,” he said. “We’re always on the lookout for suspicious buying. I have four teenage daughters, so it’s something I’m sensitive to.”
source: Berkshire Eagle
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Adolescents and Alcohol
By admin | February 5, 2010
Does your child get drunk? How do you know? Do anyone else’s kids drink? Think it can’t happen to you? Maybe you don’t have adolescent children, but you drive on the roads here. Do you want a drunken teenager coming at you in the left lane? This is your issue too.
Every day 4,500 young people under the age of 16 take their first drink. Obviously, there are a lot of great kids who don’t do this. But for many, it becomes a real problem. One thousand seven hundred college students die each year of alcohol-related causes — far more than drug-related deaths. Adolescents who start to drink before they are 18 are four times more likely to end up alcohol-dependent than if they had waited until the legal drinking age of 21.
Locally, 30 percent of students have admitted to drinking regularly, 3 percent said they drink every day, and 7 percent said they drink several times a week. Twenty percent of students admitted to having gotten high at high school. Did we know about this?
There has been a cultural shift for young people and booze. Increasingly kids are taking their first drink as young as 9 or 10 years old. Their attitudes seem more aggressive, with the goal being not to drink, but to get drunk. On some campuses, college drinking is out of control.
They learn it early. Advertising on billboards and in magazines makes drinking look benign, casual, sexy, and cool. Gas stations have turned into minimarts, selling beer and liquor made to taste like lemonade. Alcohol brands’ sponsorship of pro sports, rock concerts, golf, and Nascar has exploded. Every outdoor event and parade now has a beer tent. Even the mundane parking lot has become a mecca for aggressive alcohol tailgating. It teaches our children lessons.
The number-one place teenagers get alcohol is at home. Sometimes older friends or siblings buy it for them. And sometimes parents give it to them. With continued use, alcohol damages the memory and reasoning parts of the brain. It impairs judgment, injures the liver and stomach. Some of this can’t be reversed.
This is not just an individual issue, it’s a community issue. Some widely held attitudes can contribute to the problem. Here are examples.
1. All kids drink. We drank when we were young, it’s just a rite of passage. They’ll grow out of it.
2. As long as they don’t drive, it’s not a problem. It’s not that harmful.
3. I’d rather have my child drinking at my house than drinking somewhere else. At least I know they’re safe, and I know who their friends are.
4. Nobody has the right to tell me what I can do in my own home.
There are mistakes here. If you condone any drinking by young people, a significant number of these kids will go on to have a problem as they get older. You are just helping that young person become an alcoholic.
You do not have the legal right to do whatever you want in your own home. Serving alcohol to an under-age adolescent in your home is illegal. If a police officer catches you, he or she has the duty to write you a summons.
Lt. Francis Mott of the East Hampton Town police has been a leader in the prevention of teenage drinking. Many nights that he is on duty, he and other officers receive calls complaining of parties that are out of control. It is not unusual for him to arrive at a party to find teenagers unconscious on the lawn. He often has to call for an ambulance. Sometimes he has to make arrests at the scene.
If your teenager is drunk at a party, he or she will be given a court summons. If the police catch you with under-age young people drinking at your house, you will be showing up at court. Judges evidently don’t like this sort of thing.
Officer Fred (Rocky) Notel of the East Hampton Village police is trained to teach the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, or DARE. He told me that just three weeks ago village police sent minors into every bar in East Hampton to try to get a drink. Only one establishment served a minor. Though Officer Notel felt this was a pretty good outcome, he knows that most of the problem is not in the bars.
If you discover that your teenager is drinking, Officer Notel recommends that you start with the counselors at your child’s school. Edna Steck, the director of the East Hampton Town Human Services Department, told me her team can help evaluate an at-risk child, as can the Family Service League and Phoenix House. These are resources to help you.
Don’t host teenage alcohol parties. Don’t condone your friends hosting teenage alcohol parties. Help young people find other creative options for what to do at night and on weekends. It’s not impossible to change this problem for the better if we all pitch in. Lives depend on it.
source: East Hampton Star
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Neural Processing Differences in ADHD in Individuals With and Without Prenatal Alcohol Exposure
By admin | February 4, 2010
The adverse effects of prenatal alcohol exposure on behavioral, cognitive, and social development can lead to a range of symptoms referred to as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Attention and cognition problems seen in individuals with a history of prenatal alcohol exposure often resemble those linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). An assessment of these disorders has found that while children with FASD may meet the behavioral criteria for ADHD, their attention difficulties differ in subtle but important respects.
Results will be published in the April 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
“ADHD is clinically diagnosed primarily on the basis of observations by the parent, teacher, and clinician regarding the degree to which a child exhibits specific behavioral symptoms, such as difficulty sustaining attention to and completing tasks or play activities, failure to listen when spoken to directly, impulsivity, talking out of turn, or difficulty sitting still,” explained Joseph Jacobson, professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine and the study’s corresponding author. “A large proportion of children with a history of prenatal alcohol exposure exhibits these behavioral characteristics and, therefore, may meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD.”
Jacobson and his colleagues examined event-related potentials (ERPs), which reflect changes in the brain’s electrical activity in response to a particular stimulus or condition, in 102 (54 women, 48 men) 19-year-olds. All of the young adults performed a Go/No-go task, which requires the participant to attend and respond selectively to non-target stimuli (Go) and inhibit responses to a target stimulus (No-go).
Jacobson explained how the Go/No-go task was used in this study. “The participant is instructed to press a button whenever a letter appears on the screen except when the letter X appears,” he said. “The participant gets into the routine of pressing the button as the letters appear on the screen. Once the rhythm of button pressing is established, individuals with ADHD find it more difficult to inhibit or hold back their impulse to press the button when the X appears and make more errors on the task regardless of whether or not they were exposed prenatally to alcohol.”
While participants with childhood ADHD, regardless of their prenatal alcohol exposure, were less accurate at inhibiting responses, only the ADHD group without prenatal alcohol exposure showed a unique ERP brain wave pattern, which may reflect a more effortful strategy related to inhibitory control.
“This difference was seen in the P3 ERP brain wave component, which has been found in other studies to reflect the mental effort or heightened attention exerted in performing a task; thus, the more difficult or cognitively challenging the task, the larger the P3 brain wave,” said Jacobson. “The typical response, which was seen both in the young adults with prenatal alcohol exposure and in the normal controls, is a larger P3 brain wave only in the more challenging No-go condition. We found that the young adults in the idiopathic ADHD group (i.e., those without prenatal alcohol exposure) showed a larger P3 wave during both types of trials — those where they had to inhibit the button press and those where they did not have to inhibit, which suggests that they found the whole task more difficult and were unable to develop the type of automatic strategy for inhibiting responses that would be expected at this age.”
Jacobson added that this study is the first to use ERPs to compare neurophysiological function during a cognitive task with these two groups.
“The data support the notion that information processing difficulties in children with prenatal alcohol exposure who exhibit ADHD symptoms may differ from those seen in children with idiopathic ADHD, even though behaviorally both groups may exhibit inattention and hyperactivity,” he said. “The ERP data suggest that different neurophysiological processes may be responsible for the attention problems seen in these two groups, which may explain why psychostimulant medication, which is often effective in treating idiopathic ADHD, is reported to be less effective in children with ADHD behavioral symptoms who were prenatally exposed to alcohol.”
In summary, he said, this study provides improved understanding of the differences in neurophysiological processing responsible for the behavioral symptoms in these two different groups, which may in turn, provide important clues regarding new treatments that may be more effective for treating ADHD symptoms in children with prenatal alcohol exposure.
source: Science Daily
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Boozing mothers affect babies’ response to pain: Study
By admin | February 3, 2010
Prenatal exposure to alcohol dulls the pain response in babies, according to a new study from the University of British Columbia.
The research, which will be published in the April issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, showed that even healthy babies whose mothers drank while they were pregnant were affected by the alcohol.
The tests were done in a region of South Africa where 11 per cent of children have fetal alcohol syndrome — compared to the Canadian rate of 0.9 per cent.
UBC pediatrics professor Dr. Tim Oberlander and co-researchers from B.C., Michigan and South Africa determined the pain response by pricking the babies’ heels and squeezing to collect drops of blood — standard screening tests for metabolic diseases including hypothyroidism.
Infants whose mothers consumed at least 14 drinks per week while pregnant or had been binge drinking before delivery did not react to the pain the way babies born to a control group of non-drinking moms did.
The researchers catalogued the babies’ heart rate, facial grimacing and other measures of pain.
“This study is the first to document a relationship between prenatal alcohol exposure and biobehavioural responses to a noxious event in human newborns,” the researchers said in a statement. They added that how the infants react to pain may put them at a risk for problems later in life.
Previously studies have shown that as adults, people with fetal alcohol syndrome have increased anxiety, depression and aggression and altered responses to stress. Yet as infants, as shown by the current study, they have a dulled response.
The $40,000 study was funded by the UBC Child and Family Research Institute, Wayne State University and the state of Michigan.
source: Canwest News Service
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Study says parents shouldn’t drink with their teens
By admin | February 2, 2010
It’s not uncommon for parents to serve their teenagers alcohol as a way to teach responsible drinking habits. While attending Los Gatos high school in the South Bay, I experienced this first hand, going to many keg parties where a parent was filling the plastic cups with Coors Light.
Usually, the parents felt it was better that their teenager drink with their friends in a controlled environment where car keys could be taken at the door. But sometimes the parents ended up getting drunk themselves and their role as supervisor quickly deteriorated.
Also, it’s not unusual for parents to serve their teenagers wine at the dinner table on special occasions. Many of us would assume this is a healthy “European” approach to dealing with teenagers and alcohol. It might take away some of the stigma around drinking.
A team of European researchers set out to test the theory that parents can guide their teenagers into drinking responsibly by serving them alcohol. They looked at 428 Dutch families with two children between the ages of 13 and 15. Parents and teens completed questionnaires on drinking habits at the outset and again one and two years later.
The study results, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, found that the more teenagers were allowed to drink at home, the more they drank outside of home. The reverse was also true, with out-of-home drinking leading to more drinking at home.
What’s more, teens who drank under their parents’ watch or on their own had an elevated risk of developing alcohol-related problems. Drinking problems included trouble with school work, missed school days and getting into fights with other people, among other issues.
The findings, according to the lead researcher on the study, Dr. Haske van der Vorst, suggest that teen drinking begets more drinking — and, in some cases, alcohol problems — regardless of where and with whom they drink.
“If parents want to reduce the risk that their child will become a heavy drinker or problem drinker in adolescence,” van der Vorst of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, says “they should try to postpone the age at which their child starts drinking.”
source: San Francisco Chronicle
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Paris fights binge-drinking
By admin | February 1, 2010
A new campaign by Mayor Bertrand Delanoe tries to persuade young Parisians to shun the fashion for drinking themselves to oblivion at weekends. France used to look down on the British habit of getting smashed and staggering in a stupor through the streets but now it is happening here.
For the past couple of years, the government has been trying to curb le binge drinking, as the practice is known, but to little avail. A survey last autumn reported that 43 percent of young French had drunk at least five glasses of alcohol in the same evening in the preceding month. Increasingly, girls are victims of la biture express, the translation for binge drinking. In another sign of the new culture, kids are also putting videos on the internet of their drunken antics.
Things are not yet as bad as in the UK, but binging is alien to France’s tradition of moderate drinking and against the steady overall decline of alcohol consumption over the past four decades. France even has a non-drinking president who toasts state visitors with mineral water, something that would have been unthinkable in the old days.
The teenagers of France and Italy are about average in the alcohol stakes, according to the last European comparison. The British, Danes, Portuguese and Czechs get plastered most often. Young Finns, Swedes, Hungarians and Spanish are among the milder consumers (difficult to believe it about the Finns).
The phenomenon is especially worrying in Paris, says the mairie. Unlike the British, with their pub crawls, French youngsters prefer to faire la fête in their or their parents’ homes. Dr François Lecomte, head of the emergency service at Cochin, one of the biggest hospitals, told le Parisien recently that his cases of intoxicated under-18s had doubled in 10 months. Five under-18 teenagers a month were being brought in, he said.
There are still differences in binge-drinking on each side of the Channel. Marie Choquet, a research director at Inserm, the national health research institute, suggested in le Parisien last October that the alarm might be exaggerated: “Young French people do not drink in the same way as the English. They consume a lot but in a more spread out way. There is a specific French way: they eat, dance and talk — activities which mean that you do not stock alcohol in the same way as when you down a bottle spread out on a sofa.” Only five percent of 16-25 year-olds indulged in regular binge-drinking, she estimated.
source: Times Online
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Going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings could help with depression
By admin | January 31, 2010
Participants at Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) could benefit from alleviation of depression according to new findings. Individuals who attended Alcoholics Anonymous meeting more frequently not only drank less, but also had fewer symptoms of depression.
John F. Kelly, PhD, associate director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Addiction Medicine says the study is the first to exam behavioral changes that occur from attending AA meetings, leading to the findings that attending meetings can also alleviate symptoms of depression. Kelly says, “Perhaps the social aspects of AA helps people feel better psychologically and emotionally as well as stop drinking.”
The Alcoholics Anonymous twelve step program is designed to promote well-being, just as abstaining from alcohol does, but the new findings show that attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings seems to relieve depression more quickly for those who attend AA meetings.
Data from the federally funded trial MATCH, designed to compare three treatment approaches for alcohol use disorder in more than 1,700 participants was analyzed. All of the individuals in the study were assigned to an alcohol treatment plan, but were also allowed to attend meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous. Information included how many meetings they attended, how much they drank, and reported symptoms of depression.
Kelly says, “Some critics of AA have claimed that the organization’s emphasis on ‘powerlessness’ against alcohol use and the need to work on ‘character defects’ cultivates a pessimistic world view…” However, the analysis revealed that in addition to less drinking, more frequent attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings also resulted in fewer symptoms of depression. The effect on helping with abstinence from alcohol from going to AA meetings, combined with help for depression is an important note for health care providers.
source: Massachusetts General Hospital
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Quaker faith helps alcoholic to quit drinking
By admin | January 30, 2010
A recovered alcoholic from Maldon said he has his Quaker faith to thank for helping him stay alive.
Anthony told BBC Essex’s Ian Wyatt he started to drink when he was 20, shortly after joining the Air Force.
Having had a religious upbringing as a Pentecostalist, he had never previously drank or smoked.
After 25 years of addiction Anthony attempted to take his own life at which time he sought help from Alcoholics Anonymous and the Quaker church.
Drink, claimed Anthony - not his real name - had an awful impact on most aspects of his life, including his work.
“I drank uncontrollably from the start, and it got out of control very early on. I used to lose count, after about the first four or five,” he said.
“I was a passenger at work… for a long time,” he added.
He worked as a journalist in Fleet Street, where there was a very heavy drinking culture at the time.
But after a terrible binge, when he “disgraced’ himself” after going “completely haywire,” his editor told him it “couldn’t go on, it was an embarrassment,” and asked what he should tell his work colleagues.
Anthony replied: “Tell them I’m an alcoholic.”
Despair
Drink also caused absolute devastation to his family.
Anthony described how he was so wrapped up in himself he did not realise the damage it was doing to his wife and children.
He said: “People call us selfish, but the compulsion is so powerful I felt I had no choice over it and couldn’t stop.”
Anthony explained that, towards the end, alcohol was a “dreadful, dreadful curse” and tried all he knew not to be a drunk, but could not manage it.
In the end Anthony reached a state of absolute despair and tried to kill himself with a massive overdose.
He was taken to hospital and it was whilst he was there a psychiatrist suggested he join AA.
Anthony said: “I knew that if I drank again I would most certainly die and I was frightened of dying.”
When he was at rock bottom Anthony had given up on religion and by the time he joined Alcoholics Anonymous he was a “very surly, suspicious agnostic - whether there was a God seemed completely irrelevant to me.”
Through AA however he found another path.
“AA meetings are held in all sorts of places,” he said.
“Clinics, prisons, and lots of churches. The particular group that I joined in 1984 in Hertfordshire was in a Quaker Meeting House.
“In there was a poster on the notice board which said ‘a silent meeting for worship can be a quiet process of healing and a journey of discovery.’
“It intrigued me and so I began attending. I liked the fact I was accepted for who I was.”
Anthony has not touched alcohol since August 1984.
“I still have to do things today to maintain the sobriety - and part of that is leading a spiritual way of life. Prayer and meditation, and attending Quaker meetings.”
source: BBC News
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Professionals Are Drinking The Working Classes Under The Table
By admin | January 29, 2010
Britain’s alcohol epidemic is being fuelled by stressed middle-class drinkers, it was revealed yesterday.
As figures showed drink-related deaths more than doubling since the early 1990s, research also revealed that white- collar workers are more likely to consume alcohol every day than the working classes.
Most admit their heaviest drinking is done at home, with larger wine glasses, stronger wine and cut-price supermarket deals all helping them to drown their sorrows. Figures, branded “shocking”, showed that one person an hour dies from drink-related issues.
The 9,031 alcohol-related deaths recorded in 2008 were up from 4,023 in 1992.
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “These worrying figures are a sad indictment of our broken society and demonstrate Labour’s complete failure to tackle binge-drinking.”
The Government yesterday launched a campaign warning drinkers who believe they only take small amounts that they risk cancer, heart disease and strokes unless they cut down.
Latest statistics reveal people in managerial and professional jobs are drinking 13.8 units a week – the equivalent of four- and-a-half large glasses of wine – compared with 10.6 a week for those in manual jobs.
They were also more likely to have drunk alcohol on five or more days in the previous week than the working class.
The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, showed that 21 per cent of men and 14 per cent of women admitted drinking heavily – more than eight and six units respectively – on at least one day of the previous week.
Pensioners are among the heaviest drinkers, with one in five men and one in seven women aged 65 and older drinking every day compared with just one per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds.
Overall, 39 per cent of men and 31 per cent of women exceed the sensible drinking limit of three to four units a day for men and two to three for women.
The figures showed that 46 per cent of men and 57 per cent of women drank at home with 72 per cent of them buying drink from the supermarkets, which have been criticised for selling it cheaply.
Alcohol Concern’s chief executive Don Shenker said: “These deaths are tragic and avoidable. They are all the more shocking by the Government’s lack of action in tackling the cheap price of alcohol.
“Evidence shows cut-price booze, predominantly sold in supermarkets, is the main driver of increased drinking.”
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “We are going to be looking closely at the increase in the number of alcohol-related deaths at a time when the amount people are drinking is reducing.”
But Chris Sorek of the charity Drinkaware said: “It is essential that we change people’s relationship with drink.”
source: Daily Express
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Children drinking more than adult safe levels, official figures show
By admin | January 28, 2010
Children as young as 11 are drinking two bottles of wine a week – more than the recommended limit for an adult woman – official figures reveal.
The data, based on surveys of over 23,000 children in England, showed boys drank more than girls in almost all regions
Children in the north of the country drink and smoke more than those in the south, data from the NHS Information Centre has found.
In particular, girls aged between 11 and 15 in the Midlands and the North are drinking more than the recommended limits for adult women.
They are consuming around a bottle and a half of wine a week.
Adult women are advised not to drink more than two to three units a day (or up to 14 units a week) and men not more than three to four (or up to 21 units a week) with two alcohol free days a week.
Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer, said last year that parents should not let their children drink alcohol at all.
More than one in four girls in the North East had a drink in the past week and on average consumed 15.5 units. Girls in the East Midlands, North West and Yorkshire and Humber drank similar amounts.
The pattern was less clear for boys but in general those in the Midlands and the North were more likely to have drunk in the last week than those in the south and to have consumed more.
More than one in four boys in the North East had a drink in the last week and on average drank 20.2 units, the equivalent of eight and a half pints of strong lager or more than two bottles of wine.
Boys and girls in London were the least likely to drink and average consumption of those who did was also lower.
The data, based on surveys of over 23,000 children in England, showed boys drank more than girls in almost all regions.
It is the first time that alcohol consumption for children aged 11 to 15 has been calculated by region.
Previous studies have shown that fewer children are drinking alcohol but those who do consume large amounts.
On smoking children in the north of the country were more likely to have smoked a cigarette in the last year than those in the south and were more likely to smoke regularly.
Children in all of the regions were less likely to have tried drugs than cigarettes or alcohol.
A fifth of 11 to 15 year olds in the North West had taken drugs in the last year compared with around one in seven in the South West.
One in eight children in the North West said they had taken cannabis in the last year compared with one in 12 in the North East.
Tim Straughan, Chief executive of The NHS Information Centre, said: “The report shows there are significant regional differences in the percentages of young people who smoke, drink or use drugs.
“It is interesting to note that London has such comparatively low levels of drink, drug and alcohol use among its 11 to 15-year-olds.
“In contrast, youngsters in the North East are more likely than their peers anywhere else in the country to smoke and drink alcohol. However, they are the least likely to take cannabis.”
Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern, said: “Today’s figures are very worrying. We’ve seeing a slight decline in the number of children who drink, but those who do drink are drinking much more.
“Too many young people are now drinking at or above safe adult levels, yet their bodies are less able to cope with the harm alcohol can cause.
“We’ve already seen an almost one thousand per cent increase in liver cirrhosis deaths in the 25-44 age group. This is impacting our health services and the lives of families across the UK.”
He said the government must heed advice and opt for minimum pricing of alcohol which would mean it could not be bought at pocket money prices.
Professor Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians and Chairman of the UK Alcohol Health Alliance said:“These figures indicate that for many young teenagers drinking has moved beyond experimentation and into far more dangerous territory.
“Regular consumption at these levels, especially when compressed into heavy sessions at the weekend puts boys and girls at considerable risk.
“At this age the adolescent mind is still developing, and for an unlucky minority heavy drinking so early will have profound and long lasting implications for their learning and problem solving skills. Tougher penalties for those found to be selling alcohol to youngsters are welcome, but parents and families also have a responsibility to help their offspring make healthy choices.”
Children’s Minister Dawn Primarolo said: “I am pleased that these statistics show a decline in the number of young people smoking, drinking alcohol and taking drugs.
“The Government has been committed to providing young people with the right advice and support they need to make safe and sensible decisions. Importantly we have given parents, carers and schools additional guidance and expert advice so that young people can turn to a trusted adult to discuss their concerns about smoking, drinking and drugs.”
source: The Telegraph
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Tennent’s backs minimum alcohol pricing
By admin | January 27, 2010
Tennent’s, Scotland’s largest brewer, has heaped pressure on Holyrood’s opposition parties by backing the SNP’s plans for minimum alcohol pricing.
Mike Lees, the company’s managing director, said the proposals were “a sensible move” and “part of the solution” to the country’s chronic binge drinking problem.
But his surprise intervention failed to sway the other three main parties, with Labour arguing that Tennent Caledonian would benefit financially if minimum pricing is introduced.
They have vowed to combine to vote down the measure when it comes before MSPs shortly, despite health chiefs arguing it would save hundreds of lives.
Tennent’s has become the first major drinks producer to offer its support, with the company’s rivals arguing that minimum pricing will unfairly penalise the majority of Scots drinkers.
Mr Lees said: “As Scotland s leading brewer, Tennent’s recognises its duty to act responsibly and has always encouraged people to drink responsibly.
“We believe that, if implemented appropriately, minimum pricing could be part of the solution by increasing the price of alcohol, particularly of high strength products and is one way of addressing the alcohol abuse issues that we face in Scotland.”
He said the firm recognises there are problems with a minority of Scots, who purchase alcohol in bulk for consumption at home, before going out and causing problems at pubs and clubs.
Combined with other measures, he argued minimum pricing could improve the binge drinking epidemic and Scottish society.
Recent research published by the Scottish Executive has estimated the cost of alcohol abuse, including the criminal justice system and NHS, is about £3.5 billion per year.
The SNP’s plans for a minimum price, mooted at 40p per unit, would see the cost of a four-pack of Tennent’s Superlager in Asda increase from £5.28 to £6.33.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish health minister, said: “Tennent’s backing for minimum pricing shows that responsible producers have nothing to fear from the proposal.
“That’s because they understand that minimum pricing will not raise the price of all drinks only the dirt-cheap supermarket white ciders, lagers and low-grade spirits sought out by problem drinkers.”
She said there was now a “broad consensus” in favour of the plan, adding: “I call on all MSPs to listen to these voices, hear the evidence and do the right thing for the good of Scotland s health.”
But a Scottish Labour spokesman said: “If you are going to come forward with schemes that put up the price of alcohol, the money that’s raised should go into alcohol treatment. It shouldn’t go to the shareholders of Asda, Tesco and, indeed, Tennent’s.”
Labour has set up its own commission to consider alternatives to minimum pricing, but the proposal is already backed by the UK’s four Chief Medical Officers, the British Medical Association and the Royal Colleges.
All 17 directors of public health in NHS Scotland, the cross-party House of Commons Health Select Committee and senior police officers have also called for its introduction.
source: Telegraph
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Minimum pricing of alcohol does not go far enough, says Royal Society of Edinburgh
By admin | January 26, 2010
Minimum pricing has been supported by a broad coalition of health professionals and drinks industry figures
The minimum pricing of alcohol in Scotland should be set at 50p per unit — 10p more than that proposed by the SNP government, according to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The society, whose members include experts in health, public policy, economics and law, said that a minimum price of 40p would be insufficient to reduce consumption.
Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer for England, suggested a minimum price of 50p per unit in his annual report last year.
“If such bold legislation is to be introduced it must be associated with a price level that is likely to have an impact,” the society states in a report responding to the planned legislation.
“The [Scottish Parliament Health Committee] should encourage Scottish ministers to further consider the modelling work with a view to initially setting the minimum price to at least 50p per unit. Once set, the minimum price and its effect on alcohol consumption should be subject to comprehensive evaluation.”
Although the Nationalists have not specified the price per unit that would be set if the measure became law, they have frequently referred to the example of 40p per unit. As the average unit last year cost 43p, only the price of the very cheapest alcoholic drinks, including supermarket own-label white cider and vodka, would increase.
Scottish ministers want to introduce minimum pricing as part of the Alcohol Bill going through Parliament, but the proposal is likely to fail after the three main opposition parties rejected the plans.
Minimum pricing has been supported by a broad coalition of health professionals and drinks industry figures, including British medical chiefs, the directors of Scotland’s health boards and the Scottish Licensed Trade Association.
Tennent’s, Scotland’s biggest brewer, became the first alcohol producer to support minimum pricing today. Mike Lees, the company’s managing director, said that the measure could be “part of the solution” to tackling the country’s booze culture.
An independent study published by York University this month estimated that alcohol abuse costs Scotland £3.56 billion a year — equivalent to £900 for every adult.
In its response to the Alcohol Bill, the society firmly supported the principle of minimum pricing. However, its document said that the proposal would not be effective on its own and demanded that it was part of a broader strategy intended to tackle alcohol misuse, including better education and rigorous enforcement of existing legislation to prevent alcohol being sold to children.
Anna Dominiczak, head of the British Heart Foundation Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre at the University of Glasgow, and a council member of the society, said: “The scientific evidence suggests a strong relationship between the comparatively low cost and easy accessibility of alcohol and alcohol consumption. There is abundant epidemiological evidence of an inverse relationship between cost and rates of alcoholic cirrhosis.
“The problem, however, is more complex and other factors undoubtedly contribute. There is regrettably a widespread lack of awareness of the adverse effects of alcohol.
“Public health measures and preventative medicine have not been effective. The message of ‘safe limits’ is always a difficult one to get across to the public; some of the hard-hitting techniques used more recently to encourage people to quit smoking have not been employed to address excessive alcohol consumption.”
Professor Dominiczak called for cross-party support for alcohol minimum pricing, arguing that MSPs must demonstrate the “bold leadership” that led to the smoking ban.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish Health Secretary, welcomed the society’s response but said it was important to strike a balance when setting a minimum price. “Minimum pricing will not raise the price of all drinks — it targets the dirt-cheap supermarket white ciders, lagers and low-grade spirits sought out by problem drinkers,” she said.
“We need to ensure that the price has a real impact on reducing harm, while also being proportionate and reasonable. The exact level has not yet been set and will be determined with reference to the evidence.”
Jackie Baillie, Labour’s health spokeswoman, said that the SNP’s minimum pricing plans were flawed. “The truth is that the SNP are promoting a scheme that will put millions of pounds in the pockets of the supermarkets and big brewers, but won’t provide a single penny for more police officers or alcohol treatment,” she said.
source: Times Online
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So many women under alcohol influence
By admin | January 25, 2010
Drunk and disengaged, they put themselves, others in danger
This promises to be a good year for Renee Palmer. Next month, she celebrates 10 years of sobriety. Looking back, Palmer hardly recognizes the woman she was in her 30s: a woman who would empty a 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi, leaving just enough to season a half-pint of vodka.
A woman who hid liquor bottles around her house so people wouldn’t know how much she was drinking. A woman who got so drunk that she barely remembers how her truck crashed into a car one February morning. A woman who lost custody of her then 8-year-old son, Ryan.
“Temporary custody is granted to the father,” the judge said. “The mother is ordered to seek treatment.”
Palmer, now 43, didn’t fight the judge’s order. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t know how to stop.”
But her worst day marked the beginning of her best years. It put Palmer on the road to recovery from alcohol abuse, a problem that is trapping a growing number of women.
Reports indicate that the number of women battling alcohol addiction may be on the rise. Some are busy moms, like Renee Palmer once was, struggling to meet family obligations. Some drink to fit in with friends or business associates. Some use alcohol to escape the complexities of life.
Some women just drink.
“There is a huge cause for concern,” says clinical psychologist Sharon Wilsnack of the University of North Dakota, one of the nation’s leading expert’s on women and alcohol.
“There has been a striking increase in the number of women who report getting drunk. And intoxication puts women at risk for many, many bad outcomes, including car crashes, victimization and many long-term health problems.”
According to the latest statistics from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the number of women who reported abusing alcohol — having at least four drinks in a day — rose from 1.5% to 2.6% from 1992 to 2002. For women ages 30 to 44, the number more than doubled, from 1.5% to 3.3%.
Wilsnack’s studies also show the prevalence of intoxication among women rising significantly, especially among women in their 20s. The percentage of women reporting being intoxicated jumped from 27.4% to 42.9% between 1981 and 2001. Among women in their 20s, the numbers shot from 47.6% to 62.7%.
And recent events illustrate the problem.
• On Tuesday, a 49-year-old woman escaped serious injury when she blew past flashing emergency lights and slammed her 2001 Chrysler Sebring into the side of a moving train in Clinton Township at 2:45 a.m. She told police that she had downed six vodka tonics and a few Washington Apple Shots. She was charged with operating while intoxicated in another incident in 2008, but she won’t be charged in last week’s accident until police complete their investigation.
• In March, Frances Dingle, 47, of Mt. Clemens, plowed into a stopped car, killing four Lake Shore High School teenagers in Roseville. She faces four counts of second-degree murder and four counts of drunken driving causing death. Her trial is set to begin in April in Macomb County Circuit Court.
• In July, Diane Schuler, who had a blood alcohol level of 0.19 — more than twice the legal limit — drove the wrong way on a New York highway, killing herself and seven others, including her 2-year-old daughter and three young nieces.
Alcohol abuse poses greater threats to women than men, experts say.
“Women are more likely to experience alcohol-related organ damage — that is damage to the brain, heart and liver — and recent studies show drinking even at low levels is a risk factor for breast cancer,” says Dr. Deidra Roach, a spokeswoman for the NIAAA.
“In addition to the health risks, the risks of interpersonal violence increases for women,” Roach says. “They are at increased risk for victimization.
“If a woman is intoxicated and in a situation where there is a potential for sexual abuse, it places her at greater risks for violence, for exposure to STDs. It impairs judgment,” she says. “The consequences of that are extremely serious.”
Generally, women and men drink for different reasons, says Beth Glover Reed, a University of Michigan psychologist who has studied alcohol abuse among women. Reed contends that women are more likely to use drinking as a coping mechanism, whereas men are more likely to drink as a social outlet.
Tanis, a 46-year-old Livingston County woman who prefers not to give her last name, started drinking when she was 36. She was a mother of three children — the youngest, now 19. She believes she was trying to fight depression stemming from the death of her mother, who committed suicide when she was 9.
When Tanis felt bad, she drank. Beer on weekends became beer and wine every day.
“The compulsion was so strong, I’d go to the store to buy it and I had to have a drink before I got home,” she says.
She drove her kids while drunk. “I was driving but feeling like I had complete control,” Tanis says. “I know now that’s insanity.”
Tanis sought treatment after her husband threatened to leave her. After one of many arguments, she checked herself into a treatment program at Brighton Hospital, a substance-abuse treatment facility run by the Henry Ford Health System. She’s been sober since 2001 and attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at least twice a week.
One of the worst parts of her year-long addiction, she says, was thinking she was mentally ill.
“I knew I had a drinking problem, but I thought I was crazy,” Tanis says. “Come to find out, take away the drink and your life comes back together.”
After being sober for 20 years, Julia, a 58-year-old Ypsilanti Township mother of three adult children, started drinking heavily again last summer.
Cutbacks at her job resulted in a layoff, then she had to learn a completely new job within a matter of weeks. She felt stressed adjusting to new people and new responsibilities. And in the midst of the adjustment, two of her closest friends were diagnosed with advanced stages of cancer. One of them died.
“I drank to numb myself out,” says Julia, who asked that her last name not be used. She turned to the University of Michigan’s Alcohol Management Program in September where she works with a therapist and attends support group meetings.
There is no one size fits all when it comes to effective treatment for women abusing alcohol, experts say. The programs that work best address a myriad of issues they may face, including help with child care, employment and the effects of physical, sexual and emotional abuse that often accompanies women who drink excessively.
Most importantly, successful programs boost women’s self-esteem and help remove the shame women often feel more deeply because of lingering double standards — especially when that woman is also a mother.
“It’s still much more socially accepted for men to be out drinking and acting out,” Glover Reed says. “It’s sort of a rite of passage, just something men do — they get drunk every once in a while. But there’s still a lot of disgust about drunk women.”
The support of other women gives Renee Palmer strength.
She has grown from a woman who wouldn’t even talk in therapy to a group moderator for Women for Sobriety, a national self-help group started in 1976 for women who battle alcohol abuse and addiction.
“Women have different problems,” says Palmer, who began moderating WFS groups in 2001. “I can sit here and talk and share about what’s stressing me” and a participant in the program will “understand because she’s been there.”
Palmer says the stress of working full-time and being the primary caretaker for a young son led to her heavy drinking. “I had to drive more than an hour to work and before I got there, I had to get him up and dressed and get him to where he needed to be. In the winter, if the roads were bad, it would take two hours just to get to work.”
At night, after Palmer drove one to two hours to get home, pick her son up and put him to bed, she’d start drinking to unwind.
“By 10, I’d be blitzed,” she recalls. And then she started drinking earlier in the evenings, while giving her son a bath and making lunches for the next day.
By the time she realized she had a problem, she was too embarrassed to admit it. “I was humiliated because I couldn’t believe I’d gotten into this situation,” says Palmer, an office worker for a construction company.
Ryan, now 17, says he knew something was wrong with his mother when he was growing up, but he didn’t know enough about alcoholism to define it.
He recalls being left late at school, being dropped off at his aunt’s door while his mom sped away, and once watching helplessly as his mother fell flat on the floor at a hotel they were staying at one night.
“I just knew one minute things were happy and good and the next minute, it was like there was no mom, just a body.”
In February of 2000, Palmer landed in jail after she wrecked her truck. The judge gave custody of Ryan to her ex-husband, and Palmer spent six months in daily one-on-one and group therapy through the Eastwood Clinic in Dearborn, a division of the St. John Health System. She also started going to AA meetings and Women for Sobriety meetings.
A life unraveled by alcohol began to come back together. She remarried that November to a man who encouraged her recovery.
A year after becoming sober she began moderating group meetings of Women for Sobriety, using herself as the best example that you can begin again.
Her advice to other women is to stop hiding and denying the problem. “If you’re not honest, you’re not able to deal with what’s going on, and that leads to bad decisions. You have to be honest so you can deal with how you’re feeling instead of pushing it away or burying it with drinking,” Palmer says. “If you’re honest, you’ll get help and make better decisions.”
In late fall of 2001, sobriety gave her two of her most treasured gifts — custody of Ryan in October and the birth of a second son, Robert, in November.
“My mom is the definition of a hero to me,” Ryan says. “She overcame her addiction, worked on our relationship and now she’s out there helping other women better themselves and realize they don’t need alcohol.”
source: Detroit Free Press
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High-Tech ‘Answer’ to Alcohol Addiction
By admin | January 24, 2010
Instead of locking offenders up for alcohol offenses, Putnam County is going high tech to try and help them get sober.
Putnam County Circuit Court Judge Phillip Stowers pushed for a program called SCRAM.
It’s a bracelet, which looks similar to a home-confinement bracelet, that detects alcohol 24 hours a day, seven days a week. An offender wears it on his or her ankle, and the alcohol is detected through the skin. The results are transmitted back to officials through a modem placed in the offender’s home.
Judge Stowers says SCRAM is a way to help people overcome their addictions.
“They know there’s a risk of getting caught on home confinement,” Stowers says. “But it’s a risk, it’s not 100 percent. This is 100 percent, so this says ‘I can’t drink, I have to be sober’.”
There will be consequences if a person is caught drinking.
The first SCRAM bracelet was assigned Friday. The woman was facing a 3rd-offense DUI charge. She had been to jail, was on home confinement and was trying to stay sober.
Judge Stowers says the bracelets will be assigned on a case-by-case basis, and the people have to want to get sober. Counseling is also required.
“You can take an individual who’s addicted to alcohol, place them in jail, spend thousands of dollars on them housing and feeding them and taking care of them for a year or two,” Stowers says. “When you let them out of jail, they’re going to go right back to drinking if you don’t help them cure the addiction.”
Judge Stowers says this is only a first step though, he wants a drug court, but can’t get any federal funding.
SCRAM will be used primarily in DUI cases and in crimes fueled by alcohol addiction.
The Putnam County Commission leased 10 SCRAM bracelets for $22,000. Most of the offenders will pay $9 a day to wear the bracelets.
Judge Stowers says this is also a win-win situation, because while alcoholics are recovering they can continue to work. The cost of one day in jail in more than $40.
Judge Stowers says he’s also trying to get a patch that would monitor drug use in drug addicts. He hopes to have that in the next six months.
source: WSAZ News
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Is alcoholism a problem of the poor?
By admin | January 23, 2010
The government’s fierce war against alcohol has taken a different dimension. When they started, the government said alcohol drinking was a vice that perpetuates social moral turpitude.
That was then, but now they have raised the pitch, zoning in on the face of poverty, a feature that continues to define a significant section of our society. Picture this…a man wearing an unzipped jacket (with no shirt), potbelly overflowing above the beltline. The hands are full, as he carries in each hand, a beer bottle. With his right hand holding the bottle close, mouth hungrily attached to the lips of the bottle he surely looks like a consummate tippler.
He depicts a low class worker trying to drain his troubles in the alcoholic beverage. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, this poster, which is one of the many that is being circulated by the trade and industry ministry, goes beyond alcohol abuse. It reveals an interesting message; that alcoholism is a problem of the poor. It gives alcoholism a face, the face of a poor low working class, the proletariat.
This poster, which appeared on the 19th of January this year in the government-owned Daily News, is one of the many anti-alcohol campaign adverts circulating the whole country. “Go nwa bojalwa mo go feteletseng go senya boleng jwa gago. Fokotsa go nwa thata, o ipakanyeketse bokamoso. (Drinking too much alcohol destroys you. Reduce drinking too much and be ready for the future).”
The words denote a well-intended message that is meant to advise people against abusing alcohol. Reports and statistics have been brought forward in various forums especially by the anti-alcohol campaigners showing that a lot of people in Botswana abuse alcohol. But is the government accurate in pointing out the poor as the face of alcoholism? Is it not demonising the poor, to call them alcoholics just because they are under-privileged?
It is perhaps fitting at this juncture to understand the kind of people who indulge in alcohol. This would help in understanding whether class has anything to do with people drinking alcohol. In an illuminating observation, artist John Berger says of the poor, “The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other.
It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The 20th Century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing”, he says.
But then as in every war, there are casualities. In the alcohol campaign, the poor are being used as a means to an end; the end here being a sober society. “It is true that a lot of us poor folks drink alcohol, but we are not the only ones. Even the rich do drink. It is just that we drink cheap stuff like Khadi, Chibuku and others. On the other hand, you will realise that they drink these expensive alcoholic drinks like wines,” says Samuel Moranodi, who works as a labourer for a construction company.
Moranodi does not see his drinking as dangerous to his health. He says that he drinks to socialise with his friends. He observes that politicians, especially those in power should ensure that there are enough jobs for everyone, “especially us who are working for peanuts in these foreign owned-construction companies. The problem with being poor and illiterate is that you are not taken seriously. Where I work the work is too much yet the pay amounts to nothing.
That is why we fail to send our kids to school and provide proper housing for them. I am not poor because I drink Chibuku, it’s because of my low pay. In fact you should note that the only time I drink my favourite St. Louis beer is during month-end. So don’t tell me I am poor because I drink a lot of beer,” he reveals.
His colleague, who only gave his name as Kgolagano has said that as far as he is concerned alcohol abuse is a problem for everyone, not just people of little means.
“People have different reasons for drinking alcohol. Mostly it starts out as fun and then it develops into a habit.
We always see people from rich suburbs, young and old drinking beer. Perhaps the difference is that we the poor like to gather in groups at drinking spots, while the rich guys drink their expensive liquors inside their high walled homes,” he observed.
In their essay on ‘Temperance, Prohibition, Alcohol Control’, Harry Levine and Craig Reinarman point out that in the early 18th Century, an anti-alcohol movement was founded by physicians, ministers and large employers who were concerned about alcohol abuse by workers and servants. It developed into a mass movement of the middle class.
“The temperance campaign was devoted to convincing people that alcoholic drink in any form was evil, dangerous, and destructive. Throughout the nineteenth century, temperance supporters insisted that alcohol slowly but inevitably destroyed the moral character and the physical and mental health of all who drank it. Temperance supporters regarded alcohol the way people today view heroin: as an inherently addictive substance. Moderate consumption of alcohol, they maintained, naturally led to compulsive use to addiction.
From the beginning, temperance ideology contained a powerful strand of fantasy. It held that alcohol was the major cause of nearly all social problems: unemployment, poverty, business failure, slums, insanity, crime and violence (especially against women and children). For the very real social and economic problems of industrialising America, the temperance movement offered universal abstinence as the panacea,” they note.
Botswana government’s raging war against alcoholism, depicting alcoholism as a social problem of the poor, reminds one of words of wisdom by author Eli khamarov who observes; “Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit,” he says.
source: Mmegi Online
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Alcohol a ‘major contributing factor’ in self harm
By admin | January 22, 2010
Alcohol was involved in nearly two thirds of self harm cases which were recorded as part of a pilot programme in the Western Health Trust area.
The “Registry of Deliberate Self Harm” recorded almost 2,700 incidents between January 2007 and December 2008.
The A&E units of Altnagelvin, Tyrone County and Erne Hospitals took part.
The Health Minister Michael McGimpsey said it was “particularly worrying that alcohol is reported as a contributing factor in a large number of the cases”.
Repeat treatment
The pilot programme is part of the Northern Ireland Suicide Prevention Strategy and will now be extended to Belfast.
The figures, which cover the registry’s first two years in existence, also showed that one in every four incidents of self harm recorded in the Western Trust in 2007 had been carried out by patients who had already been treated for self harm that year.
By 2008, the repeat attendance figure had reduced to one in five (20.8%).
The highest rates of self-harm were among women aged between 35 and 44 years old and men in the 25-34 age group.
The registry’s first report also said that patients were more likely to need treatment for self harm at weekends.
‘Key priority’
Alcohol was not the “main method of self-harm” but featured as a “major contributing factor” and was involved in 63.8% of all cases.
There was also a 10% increase in the number of self harm cases involving alcohol from 2007 to 2008.
Mr McGimpsey said addressing the issue of alcohol misuse continued to be “a key priority” for his Department.
He added the report provided “a greater understanding of deliberate self-harm” and would help health and social care professionals in planning their response to those at risk.
source: BBC News
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Stressed Diggers turning to alcohol on return from front line
By admin | January 21, 2010
ALCOHOL has become the treatment of choice for an unfortunate number of Australian troops left traumatised by their service in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Taxpayers are now funding rehabilitation and sometimes compensation for their addiction, not to mention attempts to break it, as troops return from mostly dry operations to deal with their problems at home.
Data obtained and analysed by The Australian shows that out of the East Timor conflict alone, some 263 personnel have had claims for alcoholism accepted by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. A further 13 approved claims relate to drug use, while two involve pathological gambling additions.
Out of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts the DVA has so far acknowledged 58 cases where alcoholism was directly attributable to the serviceman or woman’s time on deployment. Another person has been compensated for a smoking addiction.
In all cases, the alcoholism coincided with the development of a mental illness that was also deemed to have been caused by frontline service. One in three troops diagnosed with a mental illness after serving in East Timor also had an alcohol problem.
The Rudd government last year committed $80 million over four years to improve mental health services and screening in Defence, after a review found that while the strategy and intent were often world-class, delivery was patchy.
Defence chiefs have also grappled with the perception that some sections of the force have a “boozy” culture, and for that reason impose strict guidelines on drinking while on overseas operations.
In East Timor, only a commander can approve the consumption of alcohol in a forward operating base and how much each member can drink; only in an approved place, provided no member drinks alcohol within eight hours of beginning duty, driving a vehicle or handling a weapon.
In the Middle East, alcohol is more often banned, and even when drinking is approved by a commander the member must not consume more than two standard drinks in 24 hours, and never in public. Some serving personnel have questioned whether the alcohol restrictions abroad might add to the stress and mental health issues.
When the troops return home, the rules are more relaxed, even if official Defence policy states that “the consumption of alcohol is not an essential feature of social practice in the services, nor is that attitude to be encouraged or prompted in any way”.
Within six months of their return, all personnel undergo an alcohol-use disorder identification test, as part of the mental health screen, while the government also runs programs to warn veterans about the health effects of excessive alcohol consumption.
In 2008 it was estimated 1.8 per cent of returned personnel were drinking in the high-risk range, but for troops who had served in East Timor the figure jumped to 3 per cent, a finding reflected in the higher number of approved compensation claims.
Defence has no data on the number of serving troops with an alcohol problem, but has improved preventive health and treatment options.
source: The Australian
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We treat alcohol like fruit juice now ..this has to stop
By admin | January 20, 2010
The night out was jokingly billed as “the messiest” in town but the reality was nothing to laugh about.
Hammered teenagers guzzled strong lager for £1 a pint at the rowdy student club night.
Tottering drinkers quickly lost all powers of self-control and wrestled with each other to be served first.
Worryingly, these sort of shameful scenes in a Portsmouth club are not unusual and are played out in almost every student town in the UK.
For a week the Daily Mirror watched Britain’s binge-drinking business in full flow. We travelled the country and saw a sad litany of idiotic behaviour, arrests and injuries as students took full advantage of all-you-candrink deals and shots of booze costing as little as 69p.
The Government will today announce plans to put a stop to “irresponsible promotions” and “all-you-can-drink” nights.
Campaign groups say a clampdown is desperately needed. Alcohol Concern said the nation’s health is in grave danger because booze is being marketed and drunk as though it were orange juice, with no respect for its toxic effects.
And the evidence is there for all to see. We were spoiled for choice with cut-price clubs and had to spend only a few minutes on the internet to find thousands of promotions enticing us with cheap offers.
The promised “unlimited” booze had students downing shots at the bar in drinking games, staggering around the dance floor and being sick in the toilets.
Our trip to the so-called “messiest student night in Portsmouth” took place at Route 66’s Three For All night. The club limited sales to three drinks at a time but it didn’t stop people downing their pints and running straight back to the bar.
Portsmouth is just one place where students are encouraged to get out of their minds on cheap drink.
In Central London last Wednesday we bought 10 glasses of wine for just £1 each at the Cheapskates event at Soho’s Moonlighting nightclub - in an area where a glass of wine usually costs at least £3.50. The night advertises drinks for less than £1 “a throw”, charging students £5 entry. One clubber said: “It’s amazing. You can get a vodka and coke for 90p.”
Hundreds of students at the heaving club threw themselves around the dance floor and fell over playing a limbo game.
Bar staff were busy all night and there didn’t seem to be a limit on how much booze could be crammed into an order.
On Thursday we sampled an all-you-candrink night costing students just £9.95 at Route nightclub in Colchester, Essex.
We were offered unlimited beer, cider, spirits and alcopops until 2am.
Girls in tiny skirts struggled to walk as they got drunker. One fell over, bashing her head on the floor before being asked to leave. One drunk was chucked out by doormen at the end of the night. At an all-you-can-drink for £10 night on Friday at The Priory in Doncaster, South Yorks, labelled “Doncaster’s biggest midweek mash-up”, we were offered double spirits as part of our unlimited drinks binge.
Abusive
It wasn’t long before the free booze produced its first unsavoury moment as a drunk lad was thrown out. He became abusive and threatening and was arrested.
Five officers held him down before cuffing him and putting him in a police van.
Our investigation also took us to Darlington, Co Durham, and Leeds where teens seem to be unaware that cheap student nights could cost them dearly one day.
Campaigners warned that the number of drink-related illnesses and deaths is rocketing.
An Alcohol Concern spokeswoman said yesterday: “We need to look at what has got us into this state of binge drinking - and one of the main factors is the price of alcohol.
“If you look at consumption next to affordability over time you will see that consumption goes up as the price goes down.
“Low prices make alcohol a much more affordable commodity and respect for the fact it’s a toxic substance is lost.
We treat alcohol like orange juice in the way we sell and market it. It has to stop. A minimum price would make sure supermarket prices on alcohol are higher. This would mean pubs wouldn’t have to price their drinks so low to compete.”
The World Health Organisation last week announced that it believed higher prices are a key to stopping alcohol abuse.
But a spokesman for the British Beer and Pub Association said: “We would like to see all-you-can-drink nights abolished but it’s unnecessary to have a minimum price.
“If people are going to go out and get drunk that behaviour is not driven by prices. It is an issue of irresponsible behaviour. Pubs that promote alcohol in an irresponsible way are bringing the industry into disrepute and putting their licence at risk.”
So close to death with no warning
Peter Ivory never dreamt his “social” drinking was harmful - until he collapsed and was told just one more drink could kill him.
His liver was so badly damaged by cirrhosis, he had to have a transplant five years ago.
Peter, 63, said: “The scary thing is you don’t realise the damage you are doing.
“There were no warning signs until it was too late. I never realised my drinking was a problem.”
He still has to take drugs every day to stop his body rejecting the new organ.
Shock
Dad-of-two Peter, who still suffers health problems, went on: “I used to enjoy a drink in the evenings with friends or a bottle of wine at home. I never binged.”
It took nearly 40 years of drinking before Peter’s shock diagnosis.
He fears his liver would have given out a lot earlier if cheap booze had been around when he was young.
Peter added: “I’m a ordinary guy who has held down a good job all his life, yet I ended up drinking myself nearly to death without realising it.
“I’m lucky I got a second chance. I saw a Tshirt which said Love Life, Love your Liver.”
Pubs must deny louts
Running pubs properly and not more expensive booze will beat bingeing, says a major chain.
“It’s not the price it’s the quality of management and staff, said a JD Wetherspoon spokesman.
“Wetherspoons stop serving people when they get out of hand.”
“The only losers on the minimum price are pensioners and people without much money.”
He said just because Wetherspoons sells some cheaper drinks it did not mean people would overdo it. He added: “Ultimately people’s health is down to themselves.”
Daily Mirror
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NHS feeling the burden as binge drinking becomes a British affliction
By admin | January 19, 2010
When the Government published its alcohol strategy in 2004, it concluded that drink was a problem for a “small minority” in Britain. The repeated warnings from health professionals, the statistics on alcohol-related ill health and hospital treatment, and the calculations of cost to the NHS tell a very different story.
The annual number of hospital admissions involving people with an alcohol-related disorder — from drunken injuries to liver disease — stands at more than 860,000, up by 69 per cent since 2003. As shocking, though less documented, is the two-thirds increase in cases involving pensioners.
Mortality from liver disease, regarded as one of the best barometers of the health consequences of drink, shows a fivefold increase in the under-65s in the past 30 years. Every other major cause of death — cancer, heart attacks, stroke or road accidents — has dropped over the same period. More striking still is the decline of cirrhosis rates over the same period in the traditionally high-consuming wine-drinking countries of Southern Europe. In 2004 Britain overtook Spain, Italy and France.
Alcohol trends among females and young teenagers have been particularly marked. A Joseph Rowntree Foundation report published last year found that the proportion of women who binge-drink rose from 8 per cent in 1998 to 15 per cent in 2006. Over the same period, binge drinking among men increased only slightly, from 22 to 23 per cent.
The costs are £2.7 billion a year to the NHS, and, according to a 2007 report by the National Social Market Centre, £55.1 billion when crime and public disorder, damage to families, criminal justice, social services, employers and many factors are added.
Ten million adults drink more than the recommended limit every week. Modern Britain may see itself as a world away from the 18th-century drunkenness of Hogarth’s Gin Lane, but if anything the average high street is more booze-sodden than it has ever been.
source: Times Online
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