ALERT :Binge Drinking and alcohol use

ALERT: Binge Drinking and alcohol use

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What is binge drinking?

Why is Building Healthy Public Policy significant in reducing binge drinking?

Why is Developing personal skills significant in reducing binge drinking?

Binge drinking is classified as an excessive amount of alcohol consumed in a short period of time. The act of binge drinking or heavily drinking over longer periods of time can have serious consequences. Alcohol misuse results in the harm to the individual, can potentially damage relationships and increases the prevalence of issues in society such as violence, crime, accidents and drink driving. As alcohol is the most commonly used drug in the world it is often not associated with the term “drug” and the harmful consequences can be unknown to the individuals. The culture within Australia allows the act of binge drinking to be seen as acceptable within society. This is why binge drinking is prevalent within the age group of 18-24.

This action area also invested in the media campaign ‘Don’t Turn a Night out into a Nightmare’ to educate the primary target audience of teenagers aged 15-17-year old’s and young adults aged 18-25 years old as well as the secondary target audience of parents with children aged from 13 to 17 years old. This media campaign includes a 20 million ‘hard-hitting’ media campaign running through 2008 to 2010 in the aim to address the costs and short term negative consequences of binge drinking. This included awareness of road accidents, alcohol related violence, unsafe sex and risk of sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancy and social and personal consequences. This encouraged a reassessment of their own individual actions and make changes to their own behaviour as well as encouraging parents to educate their children about the harm of binge drinking and to become a role model for their children about responsible alcohol use. This significantly reduces the incidence of binge drinking by targeting a range of individuals associated with binge drinking and the parents of those individuals in a media format that young people and their parents have immediate access to.

What is the Ottawa Charter?

The first action area, Developing Personal Skills, focuses on personal and social development through providing necessary information, education for health, and improving life skills. As binge drinking and underage binge drinking is one of Australia’s biggest health issues amongst young people, information is embedded into the Australian curriculum for secondary students from years 7 to 10 in the compulsory subject, PDHPE. Teachers are required to educate students on the topic of drug use in the strand 3 individual and community health section of the syllabus. This provides information to young adolescents that are leading into adulthood allowing them to have the knowledge and education to make sensible decisions about alcohol use and the consequences of binge drinking. Education reduces the prevalence of binge drinking significantly as it encourages adolescents to evaluate risk taking behaviour. This knowledge will continue to be relevant throughout their adult life hopefully influencing their families and peers.

The second action area, Building Healthy Public Policy, focuses on the aspect of making policy makers of all levels aware of the health consequences of their decisions and their responsibility for health. This includes approaches such as legislation, government funding, taxation and organisational change. This action area reduces the incidence of binge drinking having laws in place to defer or prevent people from the high risk consequences of binge drinking within public premises. Research has shown 1 in 5 (18.2%) Australians over 14 drink at levels that put them at risk of alcohol-related harm to reduce this the responsible service of alcohol and the stricter monitoring of this law reduces the prevalence of binge drinking. The responsible service of alcohol (RSA) law is a requirement for any worker to be permitted to serve alcohol in bars, nightclubs, registered clubs, restaurants, hotels and licensed karaoke bars. The license deals with alcohol related violence and crime, drunk and disorderly patrons, noise disturbances and intoxicated minors. This allows the employee of the registered business to refuse to serve alcohol to intoxicated individuals, to refuse minors alcohol on premises, not serve anyone who arrives intoxicated and discourage harmful behaviour. This also forces individuals to ‘sober’ up during a night out. This law has reduced binge drinking related violence.

The World Health Organisation in 1986 developed the Ottawa Charter with 5 action Areas for Health Promotion. The organisation strives to empower people to increase their control over individual wellbeing and to improve their health status. This is the goal to reach a state of complete physical, mental, spiritual emotional and social wellbeing. This organisation uses the Ottawa charter to significantly reduce and/or stop the risk taking behaviour and unhealthy habits that occur with the act of binge drinking.

How does socioeconomic factors affect an individuals alcohol use

Determinants of health help predict and explain trends in health. This can explain why some individuals have better health than others based on these factors.

Socioeconomic factors include employment, education and income. People and groups which are economically and socially disadvantaged tend to have a lower level of health. Unemployment can have an impact on health status. Lack of work can contribute to higher mortality and illness as it reduces the ability to access health related products and services and can lead alienation and poor self-esteem.

Higher levels of education lead to higher income and better employment which result in providing the knowledge and skills to achieve a healthy lifestyle. It is evident that the educated and employed individuals are more likely to focus on a healthy lifestyle in a long term sense where as an individual with a low economic status is less likely to do so. An example of this would be the lower the economic status the higher the prevalence of alcohol use and abuse is.

Higher levels of income directly relate to a higher level of education and employment. This allows the individual to access goods and services.

In terms of alcohol use a person with low education, income and employment are more likely to engage the consumption of alcohol due to the lack of understanding about the risks associated. This can lead to binge drinking in which turn can results in the inability to seek help and treatment. The low economic status can empower an individual to strive towards a high economic status based on situations such as binge drinking abuse towards the individual which defers them from engaging in consumption of alcohol.

A person with higher education is more likely to secure employment with high income allowing the person to make the correct decisions about alcohol intake and seek help through health services to monitor personal health or they many have a high socioeconomic status but the income allows them to have high accessibility of alcohol the more likely to use it as a stress relief from higher level employment.

How does sociocultural factors affect an individuals alcohol use

A strategy beneficial in reducing binge drinking amongst young people

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Reorientating health services is focused on looking beyond the diagnosis, treatment and rehab and move towards health promotion and prevention. To prevent 18-24-year old’s from the negative acute and chronic consequences of binge drinking a strategy that looks at prevention would be motivational speakers that have been impacted significantly by the actions of binge drinking themselves or of other who have been binge drinking. This could be in place for 17 to 18-year old’s who are about to or are legal to drink in Australia. This strategy is beneficial as it makes the actions and consequences of binge drinking evident to young adolescents. This puts the teenagers in the position to re-evaluate the risks and can greatly effect the emotions of the individuals which can spark a change in previous or future behaviour. This can be most effective in schools in which individuals have known the motivational speaker and seen the potential they had to achieve anything and the consequence they paid for engaging in binge drinking. This can also be implemented in Universities and Workplaces to remind 19-24-year old’s of the risks of reckless alcohol consumption.

The sociocultural factors can have an effect on alcohol use. This can occur due to inequities between different social groups. The sociocultural factor of family can lead to a reduced amount of drinking due to the busy lifestyle of looking after kids and being a role model for the children compared to a single individual. This can also be a defining factor as the attitudes parents have on alcohol use will be passed down to children. For example, a family with parents who regularly drink, and drink around their children are more likely to have children that follow those same drinking attitudes. The “kids absorb your drinking” ad campaign by Drink wise Australia highlights the negative effect drinking habits have on younger generations if constantly in an environment of alcoholism and binge drinking. This can have reverse effects as it can encourage a teenager with parents who drink heavily to have healthier habits including drinking sensibly and avoiding consuming alcohol in front of children. Parents have the most significant influence on young children between the ages of 0-12.

Peers can have a higher impact of the consumption of alcohol use especially amongst young people as they are the most influential in between the ages 12 to 18. This is why alcohol use and binge drinking can occur within the young adolescents as they want to be accepted by peers. If an age or friend group accepts the act of binge drinking or underage drinking, then the individual if more likely to engage in drinking for reason that may include: pressure to conform to social norms and to have respect within a friend group. Also when an age group doesn’t engage in binge drinking and alcohol use the individual is more likely to follow the attitudes and morals of their peers.

The media influences the values, morals opinions and knowledge. This is why there is positive and negative influences on alcohol use. Government ads promoting safe consumption of alcohol and documentaries can promote a healthier lifestyle but advertisements within sporting games to promote beer and alcohol promotes binge drinking and high risk behavior. An adolescent highly exposed to media that creates the image of Alcohol consumption being an attractive habit encourages the adolescent to engage in such behaviors but an adolescent exposed to the risks and consequences of unsafe alcohol use is more likely to adopt safe use of alcohol.

The accepted ways of behaving within a group within society is known as the sociocultural factor, culture. These cultural groups in some circumstances, are strongly associated with low socioeconomic status. These groups can be affected by social exclusion or prior hardships impacting their health status. When relating culture to the impact of alcohol use, an aboriginal group is more likely to engage in alcohol abuse because of the isolation and discrimination present within modern society. Often the alcohol is used as a method of helping with the pain caused by the actions of the Caucasian population. On the other hand, Australia’s drinking culture in general is a negative effect on health as it accepts binge drinking as acceptable within society.

Religion generally has positive health benefits on individuals including social support, giving meaning and purpose, a belief system and moral code. But in some incidents religion becomes negative and alienating to individuals that do not conform with the moral code which is a contributing factor for poor health for those effected. Some religions such as Islam forbids the consumption of alcohol in small or large quantities as the Islam’s holistic approach to health and well-being prevents anything harmful or mostly harmful. In Christianity Jesus is seen to drink wine in part of the bible indicating the use of alcohol is accepted as part of the religion but compared with Islam religion, it is not strict of the amount of alcohol which can result in alcohol abuse if different opinions are formed from general information.

Overall, socioeconomic and sociocultural factors can affect an individual’s alcohol use based on each individual’s personal circumstances.

Another strategy beneficial in reducing binge drinking amongst young people

The government also introduced the lockout laws which prevent individuals from entering pubs, bars and registered clubs (excluding small bars, restaurants and tourism accommodation establishments) after 1:30am and service of alcohol ceases at 3:00am. The law includes any currently licenced venues that are permitted to remain open beyond 3:00am can continue but without service of alcohol and the refusal of entry if intoxicated. This law reduces the incidence of binge drinking by lowering the alcohol related violence through stopping the intoxication that can occur within the early hours of the morning. This also prevents patrons from entering a premises intoxicated which prevents further intoxication and damage to the body. Within Sydney there has been 40% less assaults and less hospitalisation of intoxicated patrons. Resulting in a lower percentage of binge drinkers in Sydney.

Building healthy public policy focuses on the aspect of making policy makers of all levels aware of the health consequences of their decisions and their responsibility for health. This includes approaches such as legislation, fiscal measures, taxation and organisational change. A strategy to lower 18-24-year old’s engaging in the binge drinking is to pass a legislation to have a mandatory test relating directly to binge drinking and the consequences. This test would be similar to the Driver knowledge test taken to receive a learner driver’s license in Australia testing the individual on the consequences of binge drinking and long term and short term effects of excessive alcohol consumption. This can be put in place with the already existing Hazard Perception test and the Driver Qualification Test as the Alcohol section within this test only relates to drink driving and not the other consequences that can be associated around binge drinking. This would be beneficial as the adult is about to have more responsibility and freedom with driving a car and can have a blood alcohol limit of 0.5. This means that a mandatory test solely relating to binge drinking can re-inform the individuals and prevent binge drinking accidents and violence prevalent within the age bracket.