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Thesis (M. A. (Social Work)) --University of Limpopo, 2019. / The study was aimed at exploring the family member‟s experiences of living with people who consume home brewed alcohol (spayoni) in Oakley. Oakley is a village based in Ehlanzeni district, Mpumalanga province. The researcher looked into the financial management, balancing of the work-family nexus and the manner in which people that consume spayoni deal with and conduct themselves in violent situations. A qualitative research approach was used by the researcher through an exploratory design. A total number of nine (9) respondents took part in the study. They were identified by the use of a purposive and snowball sampling method. Furthermore, the researcher used a semi-structured interview to collect data which was analysed by a thematic analysis structure. Data obtained from the study reveals that people that consume spayoni spend less time with family members as they are either out at work or drinking spayoni throughout the day. They leave home very early in the morning and come back late at night. Family roles and relationships are negatively affected by their routines. The people that consume spayoni mostly rely in piece jobs hence they don‟t have stable income. Nonetheless, the little money that they get is spent solely on the purchase of spayoni. They do not prioritise financial contribution towards household needs. The study also identified that people that consume spayoni are generally disrespectful when drunk but refrain from violent situations. In order to combat the challenges faced by the family members, internal and external measures should be put in place. The use of community awareness campaigns is one method which can help in reducing the demand of spayoni in Oakley village. Involvement of monitoring bodies such as the Liquor control boards and the local traditional authorities will assist the community to have regulations governing the supply of home brewed alcohol. Family members should also develop platforms of open communication between each other to avoid misunderstandings and build a more positive family environment.

Exposure to parental alcohol use disturbs important family relationships and may influence self-differentiation and triangulation, especially among siblings. The sibling relationship provides a foundation for future relationships, yet researchers know little about how parental alcohol abuse influences the sibling relationship. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological inquiry was to explore the influence of parental alcohol abuse on triangulation and self-differentiation in the sibling relationship in families of origin. Purposeful sampling and semistructured, face-to-face interviews were used to gather information from 12 self-identified adult children of alcoholics to explore triangulation and self-differentiation among siblings. The research questions guided the study to help reveal how triangulation and self-differentiation among siblings is influenced in their family of origin by parental alcoholism. Twelve audio-recorded interviews were manually transcribed and coded for themes using a categorization system based on word repetitions, key terms, and metaphors. Family systems theory served as the conceptual framework for the study. Member-checking, detailed descriptions and audit trials were used to determine the trustworthiness of data. Sibling relationships in an alcohol-focused family system were found to be volatile and stressful, resulting in triangulated relationships and a distorted sense of self. The results of this study may add to the current body of literature on the alcohol-focused family system, and the associated recommendations may inform treatment modules with targeted interventions designed for siblings. Such interventions would result from a proposed shift in the current treatment focus on the identified client to a more family system based approach to treatment.

The relationship between alcoholism and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) has been discussed in two research areas: research on the prevalence of GAD in alcoholics, and the prevalence of alcoholism in individuals diagnosed with GAD. Studies indicate that between 6 to 26% of alcoholics have a current diagnosis of GAD, with a lifetime prevalence rate of up 51%. In the general population, 4% would currently receive a diagnosis of GAD, with a lifetime prevalence of 8%. This meta-analytic review of the empirical literature examines the relationship between GAD and alcoholism. The author used percentages to compare the results of various studies. The averaged results of these various studies suggested there is a 25% comorbidity rate of GAD and alcoholism. critical review of the studies examined in this review revealed substantial methodological errors. Based on a critical review of the research methodology in the studies cited, the author proposed further research.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Anxiety disorders are the most common class of mental disorders in the United States, and they both promote and exacerbate disorders of substance abuse. Mounting evidence of sex differences in the relationship between anxiety disorders and alcoholism supports the potential existence of an anxiety-dependent vulnerability to alcohol abuse in women compared with men. One potential point of overlap in the physiological systems involved in anxiety response and reward processing is the amygdala. Here, a model of chronic stress in rodents was employed to probe changes in the electrophysiological and biochemical properties of the amygdala at a post-stress baseline and during a post-stress first exposure to alcohol. Electrophysiological data revealed that neurons in the centromedial amygdala were more responsive to stimulation in the basolateral amygdala in females compared with males, but a history of chronic stress altered the female response to match that of males with or without a history of chronic stress. Protein analysis of postsynaptic glutamatergic receptor expression and phosphorylation in the amygdala did not indicate any differences based on sex or exposure to stress or alcohol. These data demonstrate a sex difference in stress-induced alterations in amygdala circuitry and indicate a potential role for this circuitry in the comorbidity of anxiety disorders and alcoholism.

The literature on alcohol is replete with studies attempting to determine whether or not the relief of tension (i.e.; certain hypothesized aversive states such as fear, anxiety, and frustration, which ~an influence behavior) plays a role in the etiology of moderate and excessive drinking by humans. The classic presentation of the tension reduction hypothesis (TRH) by Conger (1956) provided the impetus for the analysis of chronic alcohol consumption using animal subjects. By applying established behaviorist principles to the problem of chronic excessive drinking he developed a theory which accounts fer this behavioral phenomenon. ·According to his theory, the response of drinking alcohol is one of many possible tension reducing responses in the organism's repertoire. This theory suggests that the human user of alcohol exhibits the drinking response as a consequence of some tension state and that the sedative action of alcohol serves as a reinforcer of the response by reducing the tension state.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Impulsivity is associated with addiction in many human studies. Delay discounting (DD) is often used to measure impulsive choice in humans and animals. In DD testing, a small immediate reward is pitted against a larger delayed reward, and relative preference is assessed. The relative contribution of ethanol to impulsivity in alcoholism is not well-understood, therefore I will test the hypothesis that ethanol exposure will increase impulsivity in High Alcohol Preferring (HAP) mice as measured in an adjusting amount DD task. Selectively bred HAP mice were exposed to ethanol and tested in DD in 3 different experiments. Experiment 1: ad lib homecage ethanol drinking for 21 days and 17 days were used to expose mice to ethanol. Additionally, mice were tested in DD while “currently drinking” vs. “abstinent”. In experiment 2, to achieve higher blood alcohol concentrations, mice were injected with 3.5 g/kg ethanol 8 times and tested before and after in DD. In both experiments 1 and 2, mice were tested at only 2 delays (0.5 sec and 10 sec), to maximize sensitivity to detect shifts in choice behavior. In experiment 3, mice responded for 8% ethanol or 0.01% saccharin at a full range of delays: 0, 1, 2, 4, and 8 sec. Experiment 1 did not reveal any impact of ethanol drinking on impulsivity. Experiment 2 revealed a strong trend of reduced impulsivity in the 10 sec delay group after ethanol injections. Experiment 3 revealed reduced impulsivity at the 8 sec delay in the group responding for ethanol, and also revealed a significant correlation between higher ethanol drinking and reduced impulsivity. These data were unexpected, and imply that the a priori hypothesis not only should be rejected, but that the opposite hypothesis may be true: ethanol decreases impulsivity, at least with high dose exposure and in responding for it as a reinforcer. This effect was similar to the effect observed in other studies with amphetamine, which consistently decreases impulsivity. Ethanol may have been exerting an amphetamine-like effect on impulsivity at the doses tested here. There is no evidence in the data generated in these studies that ethanol increases impulsivity.

Alcohol consumption is a leading cause of morbidity and premature mortality. In the United States, consumption remains highly prevalent, and certain subgroups have been increasing alcohol risks in recent decades. Among these are women in the mid-life, who have increased rates of both alcohol consumption (vs. abstention) and binge drinking (i.e., multiple drinks in a setting). Women’s alcohol use has increased concurrent with social and economic gains. These gains in women’s social and economic status are indicative of broader declines in structural sexism, a macro-level, systematic source of gender inequality. The objective of this dissertation is to examine the associations between state-level structural sexism (e.g.., social, political, and economic gender inequality) and patterns of women’s alcohol consumption. This dissertation is presented in five chapters: first, an introduction; second, a narrative historical review of the relationship between structural sexism in the United States and women’s health outcomes, with a lens towards understanding the theoretical and epidemiologic sources of conflicting study findings; third, an empirical study of the relationship between state-level structural sexism and both alcohol consumption and binge drinking among women in the mid-life in recent cohorts; fourth, an empirical study examining structural sexism as a source of heterogeneity for relationships between women’s social positions—namely, their occupational characteristics—and both alcohol consumption and binge drinking; fifth, a discussion of findings and implications for future research. Materials and methods The narrative literature review drew from empirical studies in public health, criminology, and sociology (N=43 studies). The two empirical aims used longitudinal data from Monitoring the Future (MTF), a national survey examining substance use throughout young adulthood, using data from cohorts who were high school seniors between 1988-2006. For both empirical aims, I measured structural sexism using a factor-analytically derived score based on state-level social and economic indicators of gender inequality, and assessed occasions of alcohol consumption and probability of binge drinking as study outcomes. Both studies used three-level multilevel models to estimate associations between structural sexism and each alcohol outcome. The first empirical aim included a sample of 23,862 women surveyed between 1988-2016, and beyond the marginal association also tested the role of three mediators: depressive symptoms, college completion, and restrictive alcohol norms. The second empirical aim included a sample of 16,571 women in the MTF follow-up surveys between 1989-2016, and examined whether associations among work status, high-status careers, occupational gender composition, and both alcohol outcomes varied across levels of structural sexism using interaction models between occupational characteristics and state structural sexism. Results The review identified the divergent theoretical frameworks and measurement invariance as the most pressing threats to reconciling competing findings. In the review I also observed a dearth of empirical studies relating structural sexism to any behavioral health outcomes, including alcohol use. In the first empirical study, I demonstrated that women living in states with lower levels of structural sexism evidenced increases in both occasions of alcohol consumption (RR: 0.974, 95% CI: 0.971, 0.976) and probability of binge drinking (OR: 0.917, 95% CI: 0.909, 0.926); I showed that this relationship was specific to women (i.e., it was less pronounced among men) and that mediators of this relationship included increases in college completion and decreases in restrictive alcohol norms. In the second empirical study, I found that working women evidenced higher frequencies of alcohol consumption and higher probabilities of binge drinking than non-working women, and that these differences were most pronounced among women in low-sexism environments. At the lowest level of structural sexism, employed women reported higher occasions of consumption (2.61, 95% CI 2.57, 2.64) then unemployed women (2.32, 95% CI 2.27, 2.37). I also found that women in high-status occupations reported more occasions of alcohol consumption than those in low-status occupations, but only in low-sexism environments. Conclusions Lower levels of structural sexism are related to increases in both alcohol consumption and binge drinking among women. In low-sexism environments, working and belonging to a high-status career increases women’s alcohol use. Increases in women’s equality are positive and important social forces, but have conferred new acceptability of alcohol use that has implications for women’s health.