Psy 500 - Week 7 Literature Review

Literature Review Paper

PSYC/500

August 21, 2016

Literature View Paper

The following literature view will address three main things: what is alcoholism, who does alcoholism effect, and what can be done to help those that suffer from this disease. I plan to discuss how many Americans suffer from this disorder and do not even realize that they have a problem. They deny the fact that they drink too much because they do not want their family to know what is going on. Many people do not realize different addictions can cause problems in a person’s life. This problem is not just with the person that has the addiction, but it is also with the family members of the family. When a person has an addiction everyone that loves them and deals with them on a regular basis suffers along with that person. Out of all of the drug problems in America alcoholism is the number one problem in many households. There is an average of 12 million alcoholics in the United States today. Among these millions of drinkers, they spend $197 million a day on alcohol. The thing that many people do not realize is that many of these individuals started drinking as young as age 15. Studies have shown that the more money a person has the more likely they are to drink this is also the case when it comes to people with money. The more money that they have the more likely that they are to drink. As this drinking becomes a problem in many American households, it also creates other problems such as domestic violence, child abuse, and other serious crimes.

When people think about alcoholism the first people that come to mind are men, but women also suffer from alcoholism just as much if not more than men do. This may because of the emotional needs that women have that are not being met. When you think about things such as depression and other emotional disorders that cause individuals not to be able to function, they will sometimes turn to things such as alcoholism. The early detection and prevention of alcoholism is a major challenge. This is because some people are able to hide the fact that they have a problem without any of their close family are loved ones knowing that they have a problem.

In the post that I have chosen to elaborate on, my classmate talks about how there are many different types of therapy that a person can go through in order to help them with their addiction. This is true, but many people do not realize that this is not only and addiction, but it is also a disease. It can be very hard for some people to break this addiction and can even lead to their death if they are not careful. Drummond & Glautier, 1994 actually conducted and experiment to see the effectiveness of cue exposure treatment. With this experiment some of the individuals did show some progress before they went into relapse. This shows that there is a great deal that has to go into the recovery of an alcoholic. These groups of individuals learned things such as breathing and relaxation techniques that were supposed to help them with their alcoholism. This was not always a help to them and did cause them to relapse on several different occasions.