Developmental factors contributing to alcoholism and assessing the impact of self motivation towards alcohol withdrawal treatment

Background: Alcohol consumption and heavy episodic drinking tends to be higher during young adulthood than at any other period across the lifespan. This may be the effect of developmental factors before adolescence which include external factors like family, house hold structure, impact of relatives, peers, childhood, significant events with siblings, society etc., and internal factors like personality, coping skills, attitude to school, workforce aspiration, misbehavior, interaction and involvement etc. Motivation appears to be a critical dimension in influencing patients to seek, comply with, and complete treatment as well as to make successful long-term changes in their drinking. Although many patients attend treatment, they may not be ready to change their drinking pattern and may not actively participate in treatment hence motivation is important for predicting treatment participation and recovery. Objectives: • To identify various childhood and adolescent developmental factors which had led to alcohol consumption in later stages of life. • To assess the severity of alcohol abuse and the impact of motivation for change in alcohol withdrawal treatment and recovery. • To evaluate progress in meeting therapeutic goals by estimating CIWA. Method: A prospective case controlled observational study was conducted in the government general hospital, Guntur, for a period of 6 months i.e, from Oct 2017- March 2018. Factors predicting youth alcohol consumption (1997) Donovan model was used to determine developmental factors contributing to alcoholism.Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire (SADQ) and CIWA was used to determine severity of alcohol dependence. University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) was used to assess readiness for change and differentiate them in stages. Results: A total number of 154 patients were assessed using Donovan model which contains facilitators and inhibitors of external and internal factors. From our data, majority of subjects were observed with facilitators which contribute to alcoholism and their significant improvement in motivation was assessed by using URICA scale.Self motivation plays an important role in alcohol treatment and recovery. Conclusion: There are many facilitators in both internal and external factors contributing to alcoholism in test group. The significant understanding of these factors could help in reducing the incidence of adolescent alcohol abuse in the society by reducing the facilitators from childhood onwards.