HOW TO PREVENT ALCOHOLISM? - ARTE - 2025

Learning to prevent alcoholism is important to be able to anticipate risky behavior that begins at an earlier age. Risky behaviors are behaviors that when shown can cause negative consequences on their own health or that of others or in society.

In addition to alcohol consumption, adolescents tend to have other risky behaviors such as antisocial and criminal behaviors, risky sexual relationships, or other joint addictions such as pathological gambling.

The existence of correlation between alcohol consumption and other risky behaviors, particularly criminal ones, is common. If we think of children and adolescents, the probability that they engage in risky behaviors depends, above all, on the results they obtain or expect to obtain with this consumption.

The consumption of alcohol is not due so much to the lack of information that consumers have, but rather to the positive consequences that it causes them in the long term. With alcohol they can feel integrated into a social group, obtain certain physical or psychological effects…

The problem is that the positive consequences of alcohol consumption occur in the short term and the negative ones in the long term.

Prevention of risk behaviors in alcoholism

The prevention of risky behaviors of alcohol consumption is important to avoid a major problem.

The prevention of risky behaviors involves all those actions that aim to prevent a child or adolescent from carrying out risky behaviors, or to progressively increase the frequency and / or intensity of consumption.

Characteristics that any preventive action must have

Many studies have been carried out to find out what are the factors that a preventive action must have in order to have the desired effect.

According to the NIDA (National Institute On Druge Abuse), in its guide Preventing drug use among children and adolescents, it points out some of the characteristics necessary for a preventive program to be effective (NIDA: 2003). These are:

• They must be specific to each community, age, and period of development and culture.
• Community programs are most effective when accompanied by interventions in the family nucleus and at school.
• Family-oriented programs have more impact than those focused only on the person in whom prevention is desired.
• They should include parents and school guardians.
• It is important that the programs are interactive. Those focused only on giving information are less effective than those that offer interaction for learning and training in preventive skills.
• They must include all types of drug use, including those considered legal.
• Protective factors should be highlighted and risk factors less important.

Advertising prevention campaigns that are not accompanied by other actions have little impact on young people, as do moralizing or fear-based messages.

Prevention programs in which an evaluation is carried out are more effective and with more lasting effects over time, as long as they are applied by people close to adolescents.

These people could be the educators themselves, since they will have continuous contact with young people, and they have knowledge of each one of them.

Types of prevention

Next, I am going to explain the different types of alcoholism prevention:

Universal

This prevention is one aimed at everyone, without any distinction (for example, teenage boys and girls).

Indicated

Prevention directed at a specific subgroup of the community. They tend to be individuals at high risk of consumption such as those with behavioral problems, for example.

Selective

It is aimed at a subgroup of the target population that has a higher risk of consuming than the average person of the same age. That is, to a risk group such as a group at risk of social exclusion.

Strategies for the prevention of risky behaviors

Towards an assertive style

It is common for adolescents at risk of consumption to have difficulties in relation and communication with the adults they have as a reference. These difficulties come largely from the use of an aggressive or passive communication style.

Therefore, an essential objective in the prevention of consumption is to create an adequate communication style to be able to carry out the intervention. Thus, the objective will be to achieve an assertive style in which to express what is desired from the other person in a direct, sincere and appropriate way, while showing respect from the personal point of view.

The appropriate thing is to inform and train the reference adults in different facilitating strategies for this style of communication. Some of these strategies are:

• Choose the right place and time
• Look for facilitating emotional states
• Active listening
• Ask open or specific questions
• Empathize
• Declaration of wishes and opinions with phrases such as "I would like to.."
• Mention of specific and concrete behaviors
• Request to appear with phrases such as “what do you think we could do ?, What is your opinion about…?

Contingency management

The role of parents and educators is essential to reduce unwanted behaviors and promote appropriate behaviors. Their supervision and control helps the young person learn the most adaptive and beneficial behaviors in the long term.

To prevent unwanted behaviors from occurring, it is convenient to intervene before they occur. For this, limits and norms will be established both at the social, family and school level.

In the event that inappropriate behaviors have already occurred, we will use punishments (response cost, time out, withdrawal of privileges, etc.) when we want the young person to stop carrying them out.

In addition, if we want to promote positive behaviors for the young person, reinforcers will be used (social, material, motivational, etc.), which will help them to repeat said behavior.

Risk and protection factors

There is a series of personal and social situations that predispose a person to consume alcohol or another drug and, consequently, to develop a problem of consumption. These would be the so-called risk factors.

Some risk factors are low self-esteem, a history of alcoholism or other addictions in a family member, consumption or a favorable attitude towards consumption in friends, school failure or lack of social support.

Contrary to risk factors, there are a series of conditions that protect people from these situations, thus reducing the probability that a problem of consumption may occur.

These would be the protective factors, and they favor the development of the individual towards a healthy lifestyle, cushioning or moderating, in turn, the risk factors.

Some of the protective factors are decision-making ability, family group cohesion, attachment to non-consumer peers, attachment to school or community resources.

Prevention models

There are different prevention models that differ between them in the attribution they make of the problem and in the preventive strategies they propose. A preventive model will be more complete if it is carried out from a biopsychosocial approach.

This means that a prevention program must take into account biological factors (alcohol or another type of drug as a substance that produces effects at the neuronal level), psychological and social (we must not forget that many uses are carried out due to their integrative effect and socializer in a social network).

Next, I will explain the various existing prevention models, the attribution that each of them make of the problem and the preventive strategies they propose.

Medical model

This model understands the problems derived from alcohol consumption as a disease, in which genetic factors or organic deficits are responsible for the consumption.

They also put the substance as the cause of health problems. The preventive strategies that this model proposes are based on information about the harmful effects of alcohol.

Ethical-legal model

In this case, the problem is attributed to the existence of a supply of alcohol in the market. Prevention is based on a set of strategies aimed at controlling this supply, preventing or restricting young people's access to drugs.

Psychologist model

Responsibility, according to this model, lies with the individual and his individual conscience. They blame the individual for not being healthy and promote blaming messages.

It does not give importance to the role of the contexts in which adolescents find themselves and promotes prevention focused on the transmission of information.

Sociological model

They emphasize the need for social change to solve the problem of drug use, since they consider it primarily a social problem. This model may err in exonerating the individual from responsibility for the problems derived from consumption.

Psychosocial model

It is based on an integrative, multi-causal approach. It considers consumption as a phenomenon with many factors, which include the substances themselves, the personal characteristics of the individual and the variables of their environment.

Competition model and harm reduction models

It is an action-oriented model, focused on the development of resources. The prevention of consumption will consist of favoring the development of personal and social resources that facilitate the performance of healthy behaviors and make risk behaviors less likely.

To end the article, I want to emphasize the importance of starting to intervene long before the conflictive moment so that prevention is effective.

Actually, it would be appropriate to start prevention in the first educational moments from the birth of the individual. If an early educational model is established, we can avoid later problems at a later age, or if they appear, they can be faced with a greater probability of success.

References

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2. Ashery, RS; Robertson, EB; and Kumpfer, KL; (Eds.) (1998): "Drug Abuse Prevention Through Family Interventions". NIDA Research Monograph, No. 177. Washington, DC: US ​​Government Printing Office.
3. Battistich, V; Solomon, D,; Watson, M.; and Schaps, E. (1997): "Caring school communities". Educational Psychologist, vol. 32, no. 3, p. 137-151.
4. Botvin, G.; Baker, E.; Dusenbury, L.; Botvin, E.; and Diaz, T. (1995): “Long-term follow-up results of a randomized drug-abuse prevention trial in a white middle class population”. Journal of the American Medical Association, No. 273, p. 1,106-1,112.
5. Hawkins, JD; Catalano, RF; and Arthur, M. (2002): “Promoting science-based prevention in communities”. Addictive behaviors, vol. 90, no.5, p. 1-26
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