Alcoholism and its Effects on Society Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Alcoholism and its Effects on Society - Essay Example The extrapolation derived from the data on drinking practices from the surveys of household probability suggest that there are nearly 29 million children of alcoholic patents and an anticipated 22 million of them are either 18 years of age or older and nearly 6.6 million are below the age of 18 years. Regrettably, even though it is a known fact that this magnitude of population and the possibility of these individuals of suffering from a variety of problems, a well controlled research is not yet done. Along with descriptive epidemiological investigation a range of other forms of studies are needed. A systematically sound research can offer groundwork for the enhancement of early intervention and effective preventive programs to eradicate the potential adverse effects of alcoholism. Even though the children of alcoholic parents are at a higher risk for alcoholism, it should be observed that a huge percentage of these children do not necessarily develop this disorder. Different patterns of alcoholism are suggested by research both with a high environmental risk and genetic vulnerability. It is likely that some individual with high risk do not develop alcoholism they may employ coping mechanisms. Multiple coping mechanisms are clinically observed in these children and many of them grow up to be free from psychopathology or alcoholism. These studies of coping mechanism are employed by the resistant individuals that may have special value for prevention and treatment programs. Concerning the children of alcoholics the clinical reports have described a range of psychological impairments that have been experienced by them in addition to drug abuse or alcohol. The psychological problems that have been observed have included the presence of both minor and major types of impaired self-esteem, reality testing, vocational and impaired academic performance and susceptibility to a number of acting out behaviors including running away and delinquency. The majority of these studies were limited to assessing the children who were getting treatment of the problems or those whose parents were being cured for alcoholism. To examine the children of alcoholics a broader spectrum of research is needed. The study that compares non COA's and the COA's suggest that even though both the groups differ in a wide range of psychosocial aspect, the differences in the cognitive performance are observed frequently. The cognitive function in the children of alcoholics have been examined by researchers as it is significant factor require for adaptation at all the stages of development. This can be evaluated uniformly across the stages of development and is associated with symptoms of alcoholism. In the book Alcoholic fathering and its relation to child's intellectual development: A pilot investigation, the author Ervin and Et al have analyzed that the full IQ performance and the verbal score are lower among the sample of children those are raised by alcoholic parents than those raised