The influence of drinkers on the alcohol status of representatives of their microsocial environment

Abstract

The purpose of the work is to study the adverse influence of drinkers on the alcohol status of representatives of their microsocial environment. In four regions of Ukraine (Kharkiv, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as the city of Kyiv), during 2018—2021, 1531 people were examined, who belonged to three qualitatively different comparison groups: patients with alcohol dependence (329 people); healthy relatives of alcohol-dependent patients (238 people) and representatives of the general population (964 people). The main research tools were the questionnaire of the international research consortium GENAHTO (Gender, Alcohol, and Harms to Others) and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). The obtained data were processed by methods of mathematical statistics (variance and cluster analysis) on a computer using Excel 2016 computational tables (with the Data Analysis package) and also the software package SPSS-15. It was shown that the presence of drinkers in the environment (DIE) of the men significantly increases the proportion of people with risky and dangerous alcohol consumption, as well as with probable alcohol dependence, while there was no such effect for women. It has been established that the direction of the influence of DIE on the alcohol status of women depends on the level of alcohol problems in DIE: the prenosological level of these problems in DIE contributes to the alcoholization of women; and the nosological level acts as an anti-risk factor for such alcoholization. It is shown that relatively small changes in the style of alcoholization of the respondents as a result of DIE exposure are accompanied by disproportionately large (many times greater!) changes in the indicators of the harmful effects of alcohol consumption and, especially, in indicators of dependence.