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Friday, 13 June 2014

Alcohol research


The Sick Role, Labelling Theory, and the Deviant Drinker, Roman PM, Trice HM, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol.14, 245-251, 1968

Much effort in recent years has been directed toward educating the public in the United States regarding the definition of alcoholism and deviant drinking as medical problems rather than as criminal offenses. 12,24 These efforts are reflected in the various publications of the Rutgers (formerly Yale) Centre for Alcohol Studies, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the National Council on Alcoholism. Likewise, as the therapeutic effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous has become increasingly visible, the public has become aware of the assumption that is held by this organization that a form of physical allergy leads to alcoholism. The A.A. concept is somewhat different from the traditional medical model, but the two conceptions share a strong tendency to reduce individual responsibility for the genesis of alcoholism.

The effects of this redefinition have been regarded as positive by most, the most prominent being that alcoholics are committed to hospitals for treatment rather than being detained in prisons .ll Medical treatment is the natural corollary of the medical model and is aimed toward "recovery" rather than toward the "character reform" goal of incarceration. In any event medical treatment is regarded as a more humane reaction to a form of behavior that may not be inherently anti-social or criminal.

However, disease or medical model conception of alcoholism and deviant drinking is not without its adverse consequences. The concerns of this paper are the possible social psychological consequences of the use of the medical model and the development of a scheme of preventive intervention which is based on the knowledge of these consequences. Lest there be a misunderstanding about the position taken here, we emphasize at the outset that the disease concept of alcoholism is not being repudiated. Research has definitively shown that the chronic intake of large amounts of alcohol may have pathological effects on the human organism; likewise, the pattern of physiological addiction which develops at the later stages of the alcoholism syndrome may be viewed in itself as a major symptom of disease. Thus, chronic abuse of alcohol may have as one of its consequences organic illness. However, being sociopsychological in orientation, the primary concern of this paper is the nature and consequences of the social labelling process rather than the nature and consequences of the alcohol ingestion processes.”


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