Alcohol increases the risk of violence in couples — especially violence both to and by the female partner. A new study of couples found that experienced intimate partner violence found 30.2 percent reported alcohol use before or during the event.
Women’s childhood and adult adverse experiences, mental health, and binge drinking: The California Women’s Health Survey.
Researchers surveyed nearly 7,000 women in California during 2003-4 and found that 9.3% were involved in binge drinking.
The reasons given for alcohol abuse in this manner were;
Poor physical health, and poorer mental health, including;
Adverse experiences in adulthood, including;
In childhood, including;
The study concluded that identifying characteristics of women who engage in binge drinking is a key step in prevention and intervention efforts.
Binge drinking programs should consider comprehensive approaches that address women’s mental health symptoms as well as circumstances in the childhood home.
Women’s childhood and adult adverse experiences, mental health, and binge drinking: The California Women’s Health Survey. Christine Timko, Anne Sutkowi, Joanne Pavao and Rachel Kimerling. Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 2008, 3:1.
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Crime Rises with Alcohol Outlet Density
A new Australian study concludes that violence rose in Melbourne communities as the density of alcohol outlets increased, Medical News Today reported.
“The study found that, across Melbourne, the three types of outlets examined — hotel pubs, bars, and packaged bottle shops — all had positive relationships to assault rates,” said study author Michael Livingston of the Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre.
“In other words, increasing the density of these outlets in a suburb leads to increasing rates of violence in that suburb.
When these relationships were explored for specific types of suburbs, it was found that hotels and bars were the biggest drivers of violence in inner-city areas and packaged liquor outlets were more important in suburban areas.”
Every new hotel pub or on-premises liquor license issued in inner-city communities equated to an extra two nighttime assaults each year, the study found. ”
The results of this study don’t really point to particular communities being more at risk than others,” Livingston said. “Instead they suggest that different types of outlets are problematic in different areas.”
Livingston’s study focused on the period 1996 to 2005. “The literature shows that suburbs with more alcohol outlets experience more violence, but only a handful of papers have explored what happens within a suburb as outlet density changes,” he said.
The research will be published in the June 2008 issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
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I forget sometimes how lucky I am.
How lucky I am to have been able to come into my sexuality the way I have, without abuse, without religious fervor, without judgment. But as I am having that thought, as I am writing it down, I feel sick to my stomach. Why should I feel “lucky” to be in a situation that all women (all people) should be in? Well, because I am. That’s the ugly truth about it. And too many women are not so lucky.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness month and among all of the ribbons for all of the many other worthy causes, it can be easy to let yet another one slip by. But this is not just another one. It’s a huge one. It encompasses so many different crimes and it gives voice to something that too many people have been shamed into keeping silent about. Of course, not everyone is being so silent these days.
Full story at Huffington Post
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Alcohol Self-Help News 