Counselling Eases Alcoholism Problem – Study

Hospital emergency rooms, where up to two-thirds of patients have consumed alcohol before arriving for treatment, could be a good starting point to tackle problem drinking, British researchers said on Tuesday.

They found that identifying and referring heavy drinkers in the emergency room to counselling cut the amount of alcohol the patients drank and the number of future visits they made to the hospital. “Screening and referral for brief intervention for alcohol misuse in an emergency department is associated with reduced alcohol consumption and re-attendance in the emergency department,” said Dr Mike Crawford of Imperial College London. In research reported online by The Lancet medical journal, Crawford and his team assessed the impact of counselling on 600 emergency department patients who were either referred to a counsellor or just given an information leaflet. After six months, patients who had seen a counsellor consumed less alcohol than the other patients and had fewer subsequent visits to the hospital. In a commentary on the research, Dr Daniel Hungerford and Daniel Pollock, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, said the act of referral might motivate patients to reappraise their drinking behaviors. “These findings provide evidence for the efficacy of point-of-care referrals for ED patients with alcohol problems,” he added.(Source: The Lancet: Reuters Health News: September 2004.)