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¶ … Alcoholism a Disease?
There is little doubt that alcoholism is a chronic condition, which in 1956 was classified by the American medical Association as an illness, elevating the status to disease in 1966 (Baldwin Research Institute, 2015). However, despite this announcement, there still appears to be a significant level of dispute within the medical community, where the concept of alcoholism as a disease has remained unproven (Hanson, 2013), however many of the characteristics of the condition appear to be aligned with a disease diagnosis (Borelli, 1989). The aim of this paper is to consider the concept of alcoholism as a disease, considering the evidence for and against this hypothesis.
The Association of alcohol disease began during the 1800s, proposed by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who argues those who drank too much alcohol were diseased, and utilised this argument to promote his revisionist ideas (Baldwin Research Institute, 2015). However, simply calling it a disease does not make it so; indeed a number of commentators have argued that giving alcoholism slave is made more socially acceptable, and created the ability for drinkers to externalise the drunkenness, moving for behavioural decisions from the realm of unsociable social activity, to the sphere of illness (Hill, 1985). This perception has been furthered by the presence of alcoholism, described as alcohol abuse and alcohol...
Each of these propositions will be considered individually.
The first proposition is that heavy drinkers display a singular and distinctive behavioural pattern of ever increasing alcohol use, which leads to increased physical, mental, and psychological deterioration (Hanson, 2013; Fingarette, 1990). Some credibility may be gained by this argument when examining the work of Jellinek (1946), who published a study examining the faces of alcoholism, with research undertaken using self-reporting questionnaires distributed through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The research indicated a specific pattern in alcohol abuse, which led to the hypothesis that alcoholism, if untreated, would lead to an inevitable sequence of increased drinking, and the associated symptoms including blackouts, withdrawal distress, and eventually death (Hanson, 2013; Jellinek, 1946). However, while this progression appears to indicate characteristics associated with disease, even Jellinek admitted that the scientific basis for his research, utilising only 100 handpicked…
References
Baldwin Research Institute, (2015), Alcoholism Is Not a Disease, retrieved 12 December 2015 from http://www.baldwinresearch.com/alcoholism.cfm
Borelli, N, (1989), Is Alcoholism Disease, The Journal of the American Medical Association, 262 (1), 343
Fingarette, H, (1990), "Why We Should Reject the Disease Concept of Alcoholism," in Endings, or (Ed), Controversies in the Addictions Field, Dubque, Kendall-Hunt
Hansen, D, (2013), Is Alcoholism a Disease? Retrieved 12 December 2015 from https://archive.is/Vj5lu
National Institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism (2013), alcohol use disorder: a comparison between DSM IV for DSM 5, retrieved 12 December 2015 from http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/dsmfactsheet/dsmfact.pdf
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