Nursing Research and Alcohol Problems: Learning from Recent History?

Abstract

Alcohol abuse and dependence are major public-health problems. They are more prevalent and lethal than problems related to the use of all illegal drugs combined, as well as many other diseases, including cancer. Among the emotional and psychological disorders faced by primary-care professionals, alcoholism is one of the most frequent. In 1986, as a result of joint support from the Douglas Hospital Foundation and McGill University, the Alcohol Research Program (ARP) was launched at the Douglas Hospital Research Centre located in Verdun, Quebec, Canada. Its mission was to promote multidisciplinary research on alcohol abuse _ its mechanisms, prevention, and treatment. The initial evidence that brought our group together was the familiar observation that alcoholism seemed to run in families. In addition, we shared a conviction that more could be discovered from the study of high-risk subjects, namely younger individuals in families with multiple members possessing a well-documented history of alcohol abuse, than from the study of alcoholic brains/minds deteriorated by years of abuse. Simultaneously, we launched treatment-outcome evaluations to test the hypothesis that genetic factors have a significant prognostic role in treatment outcome. In order to recruit research subjects, we sought collaborations with public and private facilities in the surrounding treatment community, most of which were residential centres at the time. We observed that much of the treatment community was strongly influenced by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and was sceptical about whether scientific research had more to offer than anecdotal observations and traditions developed since the 1930s.