While folks debate whether alcoholism is a disease, perhaps new scientific information will help put some questions to rest. Science has found a link between alcoholism and depression.
Research finds now that mood-related drinking that is associated with negative attitudes may be susceptible to the development of a link between mood disorder and alcohol dependence. Illnesses like this seem to be linked in certain individuals and also in certain families. This means in some individuals and families there may be a genetic risk for depression that propels an individual to drink.
Scientists believe that the combination of that genetic risk and social circumstances impact much of what happens to individuals.
The interesting part of the link is that it can differ by gender, according to Victor Hesselbrock who is professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. He said:
Studies of both clinical and community samples have found that primary depression – depression occurs first, followed by alcoholism – is more typical in females while primary alcoholism – alcoholism followed by depression – is more common among males.
“Furthermore, while most persons affected with alcoholism do report a lifetime history of significant depressive symptoms, the reverse is not true. Most people with depression do not report long periods of heavy drinking nor do they report significant numbers of lifetime AD symptoms.”
Scientists were interested because there was evidence that families shared social and environmental risks that could contribute to the link between mood disorder and alcohol disorder and drinking motivated by mood. No study had looked at whether those motives could explain the overlapping familial risk for developing the combination of MD and AD.“
More than 5000 individuals, almost equally divided between men and women over age 30, were used in this study, drawn from the Virginia Adult Twin Study of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders. “Our study suggests that the familial factors that underlie mood-related drinking motives are the same factors that contribute to the overlapping familial risk for MD and AD,” said Young-Wolff.
According to the scientific results of this study, those who have strong mood-related drinking motives may be at increased risk to the development of both mood disorder and alcoholism disorder. On the other hand, the study doesn’t explain why some drinking behavior begins in adolescence because the participants didn’t encompass the adolescent age group. Therefore it can’t be concluded that teens start to drink early because of feelings of depression.
Because there are those individuals who have high mood-related motives, Carol A.Prescott, a corresponding author of the study currently presented maintains, that using alcohol occasionally to unwind may not be a bad thing but folks should avoid heavy drinking as a regular way to cope with negative emotions.
“I think it is important that family members understand that there is a real link between drinking and depression,” said Hesselbrock. She goes on to say that those with mood disorder, stopping drinking will reduce the symptoms of depression but not totally relieve it.
This finding may also be looked at in the light
of information about the rate of increase both in depression and alcoholism in the world that was found 17 years ago . Incapacitating depression has been increasing with each generation born after 1915. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, severe depression is said to effect 9 percent of females during their lifetimes and 5 percent of males at the time they looked at this issue.
This information will also likely be useful in helping to diagnose individuals
at risk for suicide because both depressed individuals and alcoholics are at higher risk for suicide than those in the normal population.
