Recent statistic shows that about 28% of adolescents living in Stockholm drink alcohol at such a high level that their consumption counts as risky drinking. The correct term to use in this matter would be binge drinking adolescents.  In the more wealthy areas of Stockholm this group of binge drinking adolescents counts for as much as a third of the population. In contrast, the adolescents living in exposed areas do not drink nearly as much. Binge drinking adolescents in these areas only counts for 15%, nearly half as much as in the wealthy areas. In light of this the intentions of this study is to investigate which explanatory factors that can clarify the range-rated differences in binge drinking between adolescents in Stockholm. The basis for the analysis is the theory of social capital. In this study specifically, social capital defines as capital inherited from the adolescents’ immediate network.  These networks are their neighborhood, family, school and also the network-belonging that gains from leisure-participation. The analysis also includes control for the effects of parents’ attitudes toward alcohol, parental education and how friends’ drinking habits affect the probability of being risk consumer of alcohol. Furthermore all results are controlled for gender, age, provenance and the adolescences monthly allowance. The empirical material of this study consists of selected parts from the survey “Stockholmsenkäten 2012”. This survey is a cross-sectional study and comprehensive survey which is biennial answered by all Stockholm's public schools 9-th graders and year 2 in high school in.The correlation analyzes in this study is presented in the form of Logistic regression analysis in the statistical program “Statistical Package for the Social Sciences” (SPSS) The results in this study shows that the area-related differences in alcohol consumption cannot be explained by social capital. The young people's drinking habits is rather explained by parental attitudes towards alcohol and also by their friends' drinking habits. The absolute strongest correlation to belong to the group risk consumers of alcohol is when the adolescents have friends who consume alcohol. This statistical correlation persists regardless of geographical area belonging.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG In dieser Arbeit analysiert man Alkoholgebrauch in Litauen. Der Autor will zeigen, das dieses Thema sehr aktuell ist, weil Alkoholverbrauch jetzt in unserem Land hoch ist. Besonders viel trinken junge Leute. Das Ziel der Arbeit analysieren: wie ändert sich Alkoholverbrauch in Litauen, besprechen Ursachen diesen Änderungen, vorschlagen Varianten, wie kann man Alkoholgebrauch vermindern. Die Aufgaben der Arbeit: 1. Analysieren die Alkoholproduktion den örtlichen Erzeuger. 2. Besprechen Alkoholimport und Export Änderungen. 3. Erörten die Änderungen des Alkoholverbrauches. 4. Analysieren Hauptgesetze der Alkoholkontrollepolitik. 5. Besprechen Ursachen, warum litauer so viel trinken. Im Anfang der Arbeit führt man statistische Angaben über Alkoholproduktion, Import, Export und Gebrauch an. Im zweiten Kapitel analysiert man Gesetze der Alkoholkontrollepolitik. Im letzte, dritte, Teil der Arbeit erört man Grundursachen, warum litauer so viel trinken. Der Autor will zeigen, wie hoch jetzt Alkoholgebrauch in Litauen ist und wie liberal ist Alkoholkontrollepolitik in unserem Land. Im Ende der Arbeit führt man Vorschläge an, wie kann man Alkoholverbrauch verkleinern.

Lifestyles, including alcohol consumption and illicit drug use in medical students were assessed using a self-completion questionnaire. Eight cohorts of secondy ear medical students were assessed consecutively between 1993-2000. The proportion of medical students in each cohort drinking excessively increased during this period. Illicit drug use stayed fairly stable with approximately half of each year group reporting having experimented with illicit drugs. Lifestyles in medical students were assessed in the second and final year of studies and one year after graduation. Alcohol consumption and illicit drug use had significantly increased over the 4 year period of the study. Two cohorts of medical and dental students were also compared in a similar study design. Although alcohol consumption in dental students was more than their medical student counterparts during the second year of the studies, it decreased one year after graduation. Illicit drug use was higher in medics than in dentists at all three time points. Nearly half of the fresher medical students reported to have been drinking excessively and using illicit drugs before beginning university life. Personality characteristics of the students were found to be related to their alcohol and illicit drug use. A significant proportion of pre-registration house officers suffered from stress and anxiety with more women than men having anxiety scores within the clinically significant range. Job satisfaction was low, with more pre-registration house officers being dissatisfied with the organisational processes of their jobs. Personality was significantly related to stress, anxiety, depression and job satisfaction. Education on alcohol and illicit drugs for young people may be needed at a much earlier age. Dealing with the problems of drink, drugs and stress among medical students and doctors may require a holistic approach which considers both the culture of medical education and work conditions.

No description available.

ABSTRACT Alcoholism inflicts great suffering on individuals and their families and constitutes a huge financial and health burden for society. Current treatments are only partially effective and not adequate because the extraordinary complexity of the condition has, to date, precluded a sufficient level of understanding for specific and successful treatments to be developed. Since alcoholism is a heterogeneous disorder there is unlikely to be a single effective therapeutic, necessitating the development of a range of options. Fortunately addiction neuroscience is a dynamic field and the quality and quantity of information that is now generated gives hope for the development of more useful treatments in the near future. Alcoholism causes long-lasting neuroadaptations resulting in poor health, brain damage, lost productivity, increased incidence of accidents and injury, violence, loss of social and occupational function and premature death. Ethanol alters brain structure and function in numerous and fundamental ways which persist during abstinence. Each of these long-term neuroadaptations is initiated by changes in gene expression which, with repeated alcohol use, become more permanent. The study of alcohol-induced changes in gene expression can aid in the identification of the molecular targets of ethanol and thereby advance our understanding of this disease. The aim of this thesis was to examine differences in gene expression in the brains of alcoholic and non-alcoholic human subjects. The first part involved the investigation of differentially expressed cDNA fragments identified by a PCR-differential display of the cortex of human alcoholics and controls. This led to the unexpected discovery of an upregulated non-coding RNA (ncRNA) in hippocampus, cerebellum and brainstem of human alcoholics and in hippocampus, cerebellum and cortex of alcohol-treated rats. RNA transcripts which do not encode protein but function as ncRNAs play a crucial role in the regulation of gene expression. Thus the increased ncRNA expression suggests that alcohol may influence the regulation of gene expression via its action on ncRNAs. In recent years the crucial importance of the amygdala in drug-seeking and relapse has been increasingly recognized. The wealth of information generated by microarrays can give a more detailed picture of the molecules which participate in the processes underlying the different forms of synaptic plasticity, so that more comprehensive and sophisticated models of the events underlying the development of alcoholism can be formed. For the second part of this work a 19K microarray was used to compare gene expression in the amygdala of alcoholic patients and control cases. The results show that alcoholism affects a broad range of genes and many systems in the amygdala including genes involved in glutamatergic function, synaptic transmission, structural plasticity, metabolism, transcription and RNA processing, energy metabolism, neurodegeneration, chromatin remodeling and the circadian cycle. The glutamate system is profoundly affected by alcoholism and in the amygdala it is involved in associative learning which plays an important role in alcoholism and other addictions. Downregulation of the excitatory amino acid transporters 1 (GLAST) and 2 (GLT-1) and the AMPA glutamate receptor 2 (GluR2) subunit revealed by the microarray were confirmed quantitatively by Western blots and qualitatively by immunohistochemistry. The decreased expression of GLAST, GLT-1 and GluR2 in the alcoholic patients may increase glutamate tone and activity in the amygdala and this may contribute to neurodegeneration as well as the expression of associative memories and anxiety which underlie continued drug-seeking and chronic relapse.

Alcohol and cannabis are the two most commonly used licit and illicit drugs in most developing countries including Australia. The burden of disease, social costs and harms associated with the use of these drugs is considerable. As such, the need for prevention is clear. Although an array of school-based drug prevention programs exist, the majority of these show minimal effects in reducing actual drug use. The most common impediments to their success concern obstacles to implementation and dissemination of programs, and a lack of sequential and developmentally appropriate messages. The aim of this thesis was to address these limitations by developing and evaluating an integrated school-based prevention program to reduce alcohol and cannabis use. The innovative program known as the Climate Schools: Alcohol and Cannabis Course is founded on current evidence-based research, adopts a harm-minimisation approach to drug prevention and is embedded within the school health curriculum. The core content of the program is delivered over the internet using novel cartoon storylines to engage students. The early development of the course consisted of a cross-validation trial to test the feasibility and generalisability of an existing Climate Schools program for alcohol prevention. Extensive collaboration with teachers, students and health professionals was later conducted to extend and modify the Climate Schools framework to include the prevention of cannabis use. To date, this is the first time an internet-based harm-minimisation cannabis prevention program has been developed for use in schools. To establish the efficacy of the comprehensive Climate Schools: Alcohol and Cannabis Course, a cluster randomised controlled trial was conducted with 10 schools in Sydney (n = 764). Results from this trial demonstrated the innovative course to be effective in increasing knowledge regarding alcohol and cannabis use, and in decreasing the use of these drugs six months following the intervention. This novel approach was found to be acceptable to students and teachers as a means of delivering drug education in schools. This thesis provides support for the more widespread dissemination of the Climate Schools model in schools. The barriers to dissemination require further research and are discussed.

People who consume alcohol at risky levels are at an increased risk of presenting to the emergency department (ED). There are a variety of methods used for detection of alcohol-related ED presentations but little guidance about the relative strengths and weaknesses for each method. This research compared and contrasted multiple detection methods for alcohol-related ED presentations and also examined the characteristics of ED patients identified as risky drinkers on a brief self-report screen compared with those detected as having an alcohol-related ED presentation. The first study, a population health survey, found that high risk drinking, high psychological distress and current smoking were all significantly associated (both independently and when combined) with a greater likelihood of presenting to an ED in the last year. The second study involved electronically searching three years of ED nursing triage text data (N=263,937) for alcohol-related terms and found that over 5% of ED presentations were related to alcohol. The third study involved comparing a number of detection methods for alcohol-related ED presentations. It found that nearly a fifth (19%) of ED presentations were detected to be alcohol-related. The strongest method was a medical records audit (72%), followed by patient self-report (67%), nursing triage text (49%) then diagnostic codes (10%). Over a fourth of ED patients were identified as risky drinkers (28%), however, just over half (51%) of these did not present to the ED for an alcohol-related reason. Among alcohol-related ED presentations, nearly a third (31%) were not identified as risky drinkers. In a survey of ED staff, it was found that management of alcohol-related problems was not routine, and many staff appeared to lack the confidence to fully and appropriately manage ED patients with alcohol-related problems. In summary, not all patients who have an alcohol-related ED presentation usually drink at risky levels, nor do all risky drinkers present to the ED for an alcohol-related reason. Using a variety of detection methods for alcohol-related problems in the ED is recommended to enhance the impact of any intervention strategies. ED staff require additional training, resources and support to enhance their management of patients with alcohol-related problems.

Dissertation (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-74).

Proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam. / Met lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Nederlands.