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The Social Convention Of Drinking Alcohol And Video

Peter A. Concerns Conventuon the increasing prevalence of alcohol misuse among older adults and its concomitant social and economic costs have recently prompted a spurt of research. Much of this research has either considered or focused upon retirement as a key etiological factor.

Unfortunately, however, the findings regarding the role of retirement as a factor precipitating or exacerbating older adult alcohol misuse are largely equivocal. Indeed, just as many studies suggest a positive retirement—drinking relationship as those suggesting an inverse or null relationship. In this article, I review this body of research, paying particular attention to the conceptual and methodological limitations plaguing many of the studies and likely explaining many of the inconsistencies.

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I also point out how the changing nature and timing of retirement demands a revision of the way in which we think about the retirement—drinking relationship, with a need to focus on how individual differences interact with situations and conditions experienced throughout the course of the retirement process beginning before individuals leave their source job to affect drinking behavior. I conclude the article by reviewing some of the findings regarding the efficacy of alternative prevention and treatment interventions that may be used to address this problem, and their implications for employers, unions, and policy makers.

Despite the widespread prevalence and costly implications of older adult alcohol misuse, its etiology remains unclear. The logic underlying such a theory is rather straightforward, namely that certain life events create significant strain that individuals then medicate on the basis of alcohol consumption Conger, The notion that major life events can precipitate or exacerbate drinking among older adults is well supported. For example, Merrick and colleagues and Moore and colleagues found that older people who were divorced, separated, or single were more likely to drink, and to drink at unhealthy levels, than married people. Similarly, in their six-year panel study of people in their 50s and 60s, Perreira and Sloan found that widowhood was associated with a temporary increase in alcohol consumption. To the extent that retirement is often framed by older adults as a major life event and, and by some, a significant stressor, it too may act as a risk factor for alcohol misuse.

While such equivocal findings may be a function of poor or inconsistent study design, they may also be indicative of a moderated relationship. Certainly, the identification of possible moderators is facilitated by a better understanding of the mechanisms driving a possible retirement—drinking relationship. Although, as in the case of other life events, stress-coping Conger, may serve as one such mechanism, it is https://amazonia.fiocruz.br/scdp/essay/benedick-and-beatrice-argument-quotes/isaac-storm.php not the only mechanism through which a relationship between Legacy Of New The World The and misuse may operate.

Insight into how, when, and for whom retirement may be associated with the precipitation or exacerbation of alcohol misuse is important because only through such insights may we begin The Social Convention Of Drinking Alcohol And understand the true impact of retirement on the drinking behavior of older adults.

Moreover, it is only with such insight that scholars and practitioners can begin to develop more efficacious and targeted prevention and treatment interventions. Accordingly, the aim of the current article is to review and summarize recent research on The Social Convention Of Drinking Alcohol And, aging, and alcohol misuse with the aim of untangling a rather dense and often inconsistent web of theories and findings. Then, following a brief review of the theories guiding scholarly inquiry, I review research examining the direct effect of retirement on older adult alcohol misuse, paying particular attention to some of the conceptual and methodological inconsistencies that may account for the equivocal findings noted earlier. Given these equivocal findings, I then shift attention away from retirement as a discrete, precipitating event, and toward the situations and conditions characterizing retirement and the retirement process that may play more of a direct role.

Accordingly, I examine a variety of work and worker-related risk factors, as well as various risk factors in retirement itself. As suggested in the opening paragraph of this article, the prevalence of alcohol misuse among older adults is staggering. In the United States, the prevalence of heavy drinking i. As a point of comparison, Fronep. Similar figures are reported in countries other than the United States. No less staggering are the The Social Convention Of Drinking Alcohol And costs associated with older adult alcohol misuse. With the graying of the population, these figures have likely risen dramatically. Yet, due to difficulties in recognizing and capturing misuse in this population, as well as the underconsideration of the secondary social and health consequences of misuse among older adults, even these estimates may fail to capture the current and future severity of the problem. Current estimates of the prevalence of problem drinking among older adults may err on the conservative for several reasons.

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First, such underestimation may occur because older adults may not experience the social and occupational ramifications of alcohol misuse often used to diagnose drinking problems NIAAA, Older people—along with their family members and care professionals—may also confuse symptoms of alcohol-related problems e. Estimates of future problem prevalence The Social Convention Of Drinking Alcohol And how prevalence rates may rise in coming years may be similarly underestimated, not only because of the aging of the population but also because of shifting societal and cultural norms. But there is evidence that, in fact, individuals follow relative stable drinking patterns as they age NIAAA, If that is the case, the Boomer generation may show a higher prevalence of alcohol problems as they enter later life than previous generations, who came of age at times when alcohol use was less socially accepted.]