Help
comes in the mail for problem drinkers
Newswise — Mailing a simple information pamphlet to
interested drinkers in the general population
reduced binge drinking by 10 per cent, and is a
promising public health approach to reduce the
health and social problems associated with heavy
drinking, shows a new study led by the
University of Alberta.
Brief interventions to help people change their alcohol use
have long been recognized as a potentially
useful strategy, but past research in this area
has focused on college students, problem
drinkers screened in clinics and hospitals or
people seeking specialized counselling and
alcohol rehabilitation treatment.
“While these are important target groups, university students
only represent a small fraction of drinkers in
the general population who engage in heavy
alcohol consumption and get into problems,” said
Dr. Cameron Wild, lead author of the paper and a
professor in the School of Public Health at the
University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
“As for screening for alcohol problems in health care, busy
health care professionals often don’t
enquire about alcohol problems. Our study
was designed to fill this gap. We showed
that simply mailing brief self-help
materials to interested adults in the
general public can be an effective way to
expand the reach and impact of brief alcohol
interventions.”
Results of the study were published recently in the journal
Addiction.
The study, which was jointly conducted with the University of
Toronto, the Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health and the Public Health Agency of Canada,
provided self-help materials to 877 male and
female drinkers (average age 43) who were
recruited from the general population. Alcohol
pamphlets mailed to them asked respondents to
compare their own drinking to the average male
or female in the general Canadian population.
“Many heavy drinkers mistakenly believe that their behaviour
is more common than it actually is,” Dr. Wild
said. “By seeing how their alcohol use compares
to actual population norms, this can motivate
heavy drinkers to re-evaluate their use of
alcohol.” A control group of 850 drinkers didn’t
receive these materials until the end of the
study.
All drinkers were contacted six months later to track changes
in their alcohol use. The study results showed
that drinkers who initially met a clinical
screen for alcohol problems and who later
received the brief intervention reported a 10
per cent reduction in binge drinking rates,
compared to those who did not receive the
pamphlets until the end of the study.
“It’s embarrassing to reveal to someone that you are
concerned about your alcohol use, and drinking
problems are highly stigmatized,” Dr. Wild said.
“We know that most people prefer to change
addictive behaviours on their own, and our
research capitalizes on this by helping people
take stock of their drinking habits.
“We think it is an innovative way to reach out to problem
drinkers who are too embarrassed or afraid of
the stigma to seek out formal alcohol
treatment,” he noted.
This research was funded in part by grants from the Alberta
Heritage Foundation for Medical Research and the
Canadian Institutes for Health Research.
