According to a recent report by the National Institute of Health (NIH), anxiety is a psychological risk factor associated with heavy or problem drinking among teenagers.
Along with anxiety and other psychological factors, the NIH report suggests that an impulsive personality and a family history of alcohol abuse may be additional risk factors for problem drinking.
People with social anxiety, both teenagers and adults alike, can benefit from these findings by taking action to eliminate risk factors for alcohol abuse and address their anxiety. Social anxiety is the most common type of anxiety disorder, affecting 15% of all Americans. Social anxiety, also known as social phobia, is diagnosed as overwhelming anxiety, fear, and self-consciousness in everyday social situations.
It triggers a host of physical symptoms, anxious thoughts, and avoidance behaviors. Often involved is a strong feeling of anxiety that others are looking at or judging them. The stress from this anxiety is often most pronounced during teen years and is often negated by alcohol abuse.
What You Can Do As A Parent?
Ask your teen why he or she drinks. Is it to help alleviate social fears and anxieties? To fit in, and not be judged? If so, explain to them the reality of the situation. They may be using alcohol in a vain attempt to cope with the root cause: social anxiety.
Drinking large amounts of alcohol may mask the problem for a few brief hours. However, once the mask comes off, the anxiety returns as strong as ever. Teen alcohol abuse does not cure social anxiety.
In fact, instead of curing one problem, teen alcohol abuse creates another. Instead of one problem to overcome, there are now two problems, social anxiety AND alcohol abuse.
Here are several ways you can empower your teenager to address the root causes of social anxiety, instead of masking the problem with heavy drinking.
1. Change their expectations about what alcohol can do for their stress level. National Institute of Health research indicates that when a teen EXPECTS that alcohol will relieve stress and lead to higher levels of social acceptance, it leads to increased drinking.
Problem drinkers tend to believe these two thoughts. In fact, there is much debate as to whether this assumption is actually true.
While some studies suggest that low levels of alcohol temporarily reduce the stress response (also known as the fight or flight response), other studies now indicate that alcohol actually INDUCES the stress response by stimulating the release of stress hormones such as corticosterone and adrenaline.
2. Encourage them to build a social support system. Many teens rely on drinking for social support. Instead of using drinking to connect with others, seek social support outside of the drinking environment. This is easier said than done, since it is a catch-22: the social anxiety is what hinders these types of connections in the first place.
Remember, the longest journey is accomplished one step at a time. Start with safe people like a trusted family member, a best friend, counselor, or pastor, and build from there.
Some colleges offer group therapy for people with social anxiety, which gives your teen an opportunity to learn how to overcome her fears in a safe environment with people who understand what she is going through.
3. Encourage your teen to increase his sense of control over social anxiety by learning anxiety reduction techniques. Nutritional strategies for reducing anxiety, deep breathing, guided imagery, and cognitive-behavioral strategies are just a few examples of anxiety reduction techniques that can bring about positive results.
Anxiety reduction techniques can be highly effective tools in helping conquer anxiety. For example, NIH findings indicate that cognitive-behavioral therapy can be as effective as medication in treating anxiety, and even more effective than medication at preventing long-term recurrence of anxiety.
Teen alcohol abuse will likely never be totally eradicated as long as there are both teens and alcohol. By far, the largest factor in preventing teen alcohol abuse is active, positive involvement by the parents in the lives of the teenager.
Moderate consumption of alcohol is fine. But when the consumption of alcohol increases to the point when an individual faces problems owing to alcohol is an abuse. It is also important to know that alcohol abuse is different from alcohol dependency. Alcohol abuse is more a state of mind. The person lets alcohol affect his thinking and perceptions. The nervous system is affected by too much of alcohol and thus affecting the functioning of brain. This has a direct impact on your judgements, your work or studies. One loses its co ordination and hence tends to get aggressive. This sometimes also risks violent behaviour and fights. Thus one can say that alcohol abuses your brain.
However the alcohol abused brain works differently in teens and seniors. In Virginia the reasons, the complications, the consequences or even the remedies differ from those of seniors. Hence the treatment programs for teens differ greatly from the programs for the seniors. That is one of the most important things one needs to remember while selecting a treatment facility for the patient. In Virginia some centres excel only in teens or adolescents treatment program and some only excel in treatment programs for senior. The difference in treatments of teens and seniors start from different counselling to different therapies and activities and even to medications.
Let us see in some detail how alcohol abuse is considered different in teens and in seniors in Virginia.
Alcohol Abuse in Teens:
It is very common to see a child as young as 11 years in treatment centres in Virginia. The reasons why these small kids take to alcohol are not new and quite predictable. The peer pressure, the obsessive pressure from parents to study marvellous, the unsteady home, fights and violence at home, neglect, etc. The kids do not know what the drink contains or what harm it may cause them. They only drink it because of the fascination of having something that is forbidden, or to impress others. They have absolutely no knowledge on what the drink does to their body or mind.
That is why a lot of school authorities in Virginia have specially designed programs for prevention solutions for alcohol addiction. They make the kids aware of how the habit is formed, the reasons and the consequences they have with respect to studies and personal relationships. The teachers are also trained to recognise strange behaviour in kids. The school authorities also have special counsellors who mentor teens individually if needed.
Of course, counselling individually is not enough. Parents have to be included too. Parents play an important role in group therapies too. Sometimes it is very important for parents to be counselled too. There are specialised treatment centres in Virginia, for highly addicted teens. There are plenty of therapies and recreational activities which are used to cure the addiction. Sometimes even medicinal approach is utilised.
Alcohol Abuse in Seniors:
In Virginia, the condition of alcohol abuse in seniors if a far grave one. First of all, alcohol is not a restriction for them. They can legally have it. And secondly they tend to look for other addictive substances for pleasure. Here treating the seniors is much more complex and much more difficult as the person could be a very old addict. Sometimes their addiction is life threatening and a complete detoxification is the only available solution. But for that the patient needs to be willing as they face heavy withdrawal symptoms.
Treatment centres in Virginia have very efficient treatment programs for heavy addictives. Now a days, newer therapies and activities are being used to help the highly addicted patients. Integration services in Virginia have also grown triple folds that help the patients and their family to choose the appropriate treatment programs. They completely study a patient's profile and choose the best available remedy for the patient. One of their roles also involves group therapy with the family to help speed up the patient's recovery. The rate of relapse in senior alcohol addicts is much greater than the teens or adolescents. Thus a complete treatment also includes follow up mentoring and with the patient and its family so as to ensure a full health recovery.
The situation with senior alcohol addicts worsens if they have a combination of other chronic disease, physical or mental with addiction. Then both the diseases will have to be treated simultaneously. The treatment becomes very delicate if they also have to deal with a mental problem. In Virginia, such treatments are commonly seen today.
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