The aim of this research was to develop guidelines for after-care services for rehabilitated alcoholics, in order to render a more effective support service towards the rehabilitated alcoholic on his way to full recovery. The necessity of the research project originated on account of a lack of knowledge among social workers on the need of the rehabilitated alcoholic towards after-care service and the specific nature that after-care services have to contain. A literature overview of after-care services was given to the alcoholic, as a background for the empirical study of the project. The literature study showed that after-care services as an integral part of the total rehabilitation of the alcoholic is conceptualized. Further out of the literature came to light that social workers have a resistance against the delivering of after-care services and that they experience feelings of discourage regarding the alcoholic. The empirical study confirmed that social workers experience resistance against giving after-care services to rehabilitated alcoholics. Further they don't consider this as part of their task and they give a low priority towards the rendering of after-care services. In spite of this, the necessity of after-care services is being realized by the social workers. Alcoholics who are standing on the point of being discharged from the rehabilitation center have a need for after-care services to help them adapt in the community. They especially have a need for individual contact with a professional person and do not want to be part of only a self-help group. Among the alcoholics who are already functioning in the community after treatment, the particular need of the female alcoholic came forward. This group feels that their family and spouse do not truly have an idea of their needs. Further there was a need among the rehabilitated alcoholics to know who will be responsible for their after-care services. This group would have wanted to be prepared on possible risky situations and ways of handling these situations. The research showed that there is a shortcoming in the practice concerning the rendering of aftercare service. Guidelines were formulated from which more effective after-care services could be given to rehabilitated alcoholics. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

Much empirical evidence attests to a strong relationship between the panic-related disorders and alcoholism. Recent data suggest that anxiety sensitivity (fear of anxiety) may be one common underlying vailable contributing to the large degree of overlap between the panic-related disorders and alcoholism. In fact, some data indicate that the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and alcohol misuse may be particularly strong in women, a group which is generally underrepresented in the alcoholism etiology literature. Research described in this thesis was conducted with the aim of further elucidating the nature of the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and alcohol use/abuse in young adult women. The series of seven experiments included in this thesis demonstrated that: (1) high levels of anxiety sensitivity are characteristic of subjects meeting diagnostic criteria for panic disorder, an anxiety disorder frequently associated with alcohol abuse; (2) female university students demonstrate significantly higher average levels of anxiety sensitivity than male university students; (3) anxiety sensitivity is an important predictor of self-reported rates of alcohol consumption in university women; (4) high anxiety sensitive university students are both more likely to report drinking alcohol primarily to "cope" with negative emotional states, and less likely to report drinking alcohol primarily for social-affiliative motives, than are low anxiety sensitive university students; (5) high anxiety sensitive women display greater degrees of sober subjective-emotional arousal when anticipating aversive stimulation, greater degrees of sober electrodermal reactivity to the aversive stimulation, and greater sensitivity to the dampening effects of alcohol on these measures of reactivity, than low anxiety sensitive controls; (6) high anxiety sensitive women show a sober attentional bias favoring the processing of physically threatening information, which is dampened through th

The influence of a primarily Public form of self-awareness and of Private and Public Self-Consciousness on drunken physical aggression and complex reaction-time were examined. Two forms of the balanced-placebo design were employed. Results indicated that each form of self-focus played a significant role in the determination of various aspects of drunken comportment. Consumption of alcohol did not eliminate self-aware behavior on the measures employed. Public Self-Consciousness acted to increase drunken impairment. A modified form of the balanced-placebo design proved superior to the standard version for use with moderately high doses (1.32 ml/kg) of alcohol on a measure of subjective intoxication. The implications for the literature on self-focus and drunken comportment are discussed.

Bibliography: leaves 271-276. / Microfiche. / xvii, 276 leaves, bound ill. (some col.) 29 cm

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-179) / Microfiche. / x, 179 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

This thesis explored whether individual differences in taste perception (as measured by the rated intensity of 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP)) were associated with tobacco use, alcohol use and misuse and obesity in the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study birth cohort at age 32. This cohort of 1037 participants was assessed at ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21, 26 and, most recently, at 32 years, when 96% of the living study members were interviewed. At age 32, participants rated the intensity of a 0.0032mol/L solution of PROP using the general labelled magnitude scale (gLMS). PROP is almost tasteless to some but tastes bitter to others. As bitter tastes are aversive, due to their association with toxicity, it has been suggested that responses to PROP may reflect individual differences in taste perception that, in turn, have a protective effect on health. Study One sought to establish correlates of rated PROP intensity in this sample. A model controlling for sex, childhood socio-economic status (SES), childhood IQ and gLMS use predicted approximately 12% of the variability in PROP ratings. This finding highlighted the importance of using appropriate covariates in research attempting to link PROP perception with health risk behaviours, as these factors have also been associated with tobacco use, alcohol use and adiposity. Study Two did not find that greater perceived intensity from PROP was protective against smoking, as pack years smoked was not associated with PROP rating and ratings between groups of smokers were not significantly different. Differences in PROP perception were not protective against the lifetime smoking in this sample. Similarly, Study Three found no evidence to suggest that greater intensity from PROP was associated with reduced alcohol misuse. Furthermore, the previously observed association between PROP and yearly alcohol consumption may be better explained by the fact that SES accounts for some of the variance in both measures. In Study Four, rated PROP intensity was associated with Body Mass Index (BMI), waist circumference and body fat percentage, in women, but not in men. These associations were weakened after the inclusion of covariates in the models, but remained significant for both BMI and body fat percentage. Findings from Study Four indicate that taste perception may be associated with measures of adiposity in women. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of using appropriate control variables in research and indicate that a single measure of PROP perception may not adequately reflect the full effect of individual differences in taste perception on tobacco use or alcohol use and misuse. Since PROP perception was associated with differences in adiposity in women, however, individual differences in taste perception may be of public health importance. Future research should use continuous measures of a wider range of taste stimuli, to establish how taste perception (rather than just bitterness perception) affects health. Research should also ensure that covariates associated with tobacco use, alcohol use and misuse and adiposity (such as sex, SES and IQ) are included in analyses.

Bibliography: leaves 540-587 / xxii, 587 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, 1988

Within Australia, research on women and alcohol has been predominantly focussed on either large scale surveys of women’s consumption or on alcohol problems studies within treatment populations. Such research mainly draws upon the biomedical understandings of the body and the disease model of alcoholism. In contrast, this study examines the meanings and practices of alcohol use within the social contexts of women’s everyday lives. Alcohol is viewed as a part of life rather than as an excess or problem.

The thesis presents a case study of New Zealand's Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act 1966 - a civil commitment law used to detain alcoholics and drug addicts for up to two years in state-certified residential treatment facilities. The thesis positions itself as a call for legislative reform. The central argument is that the Act is an anachronistic and potentially draconian piece of social legislation which has no place on the modern-day New Zealand statute book. In the first part of the thesis, Chapter 1 introduces the research, outlines the structure and methodology of the thesis, and locates the study within a wider tradition of scholarship on the management of people with alcohol problems. Chapter 2 summarises the analytical framework that is used to evaluate the Act, attaching particular importance to both the philosophical traditions and the practical strategies of harm minimisation and therapeutic jurisprudence. Chapter 3 gives a positivist reading of the legislation : outlining the evolution of the Act, essaying its major provisions, and noting the efforts that have been made to refine or reform the statute since it was passed in the mid-1960s. Chapter 4 draws on the limited amount of data available to describe how the Act is currently operating 'on the ground'. In the second part of the thesis, the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act is put into a comparative context by describing examples of similar-type statutes that exist in two other jurisdictions. Chapter 5 focuses on the New South Wales Inebriates Act 1912; Chapter 6 focuses on the Swedish Act on Care of Addicts in Certain Cases 1989. The final part of the thesis builds a case for reform of the Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Act. Chapter 7 identifies various practical and clinical problems with the Act, which mean that the statute does not work in instrumental terms. It is submitted that the Act cannot be said to make better provision for the care and treatment of alcoholics. Chapter 8 highlights several legal and philosophical difficulties with the Act, which mean that the legislation does not work in value terms. It is submitted that the Act is offensive to the right to refuse treatment and fundamentally conflicts with the principles of individual autonomy and informed consent. Chapter 9 proposes three options for reforming the Act, expressing a preference for the outright repeal of the statute. Finally, Chapter 10 draws conclusions from the preceding discussion, and speculates on the likelihood that the recommended reforms will be implemented.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis studies the relationship between subjective experience and social environment during recovery from alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). As a result of participation in AA meetings, many alcoholics undergo healing transformations involving a sense of acceptance of themselves, others and the world. In early sobriety these experiences often remove an alcoholic’s desire to drink. Outside AA, however, alcoholics frequently experience subjective unravelling – a sense of conflict with themselves, others and the world. For many, this subjective state is associated with actual or potential craving for a drink. Regular participation in AA meetings alleviates these states. This thesis construes the relationship between subjective experience and immediate social environment in terms of ‘experiential stakes of relevance’. This conceptual category can be used to characterise both the structural properties of the social environment and the key attributes of the subjective experience of agents within this environment. Listening to stories at AA meetings results for many alcoholics in a radical change in ‘experiential stakes of relevance’. It is argued that the process of spontaneous re-connection with one’s past experiences during AA meetings is akin to the process of mobilisation of embodied dispositions as theorised by Bourdieu. Transformation in AA takes place in the space of a mere one and a half hours and involves processes of intensification of experience. These are analysed in terms of Bourdieu’s notion of ‘illusio’ and Chion’s notion of ‘rendu’. The healing experiences of acceptance presuppose a social environment free of interpersonal conflict. This thesis argues that the need to structurally eliminate conflict between alcoholics has turned AA into a social field which is sustained by the very healing subjective experiences that it facilitates. In the process, AA has developed structural elements which can best be understood as mechanisms inverting the social logic of competitive fields. The fieldwork entailed a detailed ethnographic study of one particular group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Sydney’s Lower North Shore as well as familiarisation with the more general culture of AA in Sydney. Methods of investigation included participant observations at AA meetings and interviews with a number of sober alcoholics in AA.