Parents with children who drink from time to time to teach them to use alcohol in moderation or are able to eat at home with friends only seek to educate on responsible consumption, but they are wrong.
At least this is the scenario that follows from a new study finds that young people who have ‘permission’ to drink at home have more opportunities to abuse alcohol out of it and to develop problems related to their abuse.
Its principal author, Haske van der Vorst, Institute of Behavioral Sciences at Radboud University in Nijmegen (Netherlands), clarifies the reasons ELMUNDO.es. “Alcohol is a drug which when used, it stimulates the brain to want more. In addition, youth have less developed brains, at least in part self-control. It is also difficult for a teen not to drink and to control consumption. Secondly, drinking at home gives them the impression that it is something that is good and will do so in other circumstances. “In their study, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs’, recalls that “in most European countries the use of alcoholic ethylic the young people has become a public health problem because it includes aggression , crime and abuse problems.
Emergencies
In fact, this week, and during the celebration in Barcelona of the V Day Update in Toxicology, was released a study (conducted during 2007 and 200), coordinated by Victoria Trenchs, Hospital San Joan de Deu, which reveals that Most emergency room visits are teenage drug abuse due to alcohol consumption. The work, with patients aged 12 to 18 years, shows that the total of 26,240 made to the urgent care pediatric service of the center of 1% was due to drug abuse. A 76% alteration of consciousness by using ethyl drinks.
For scientists Dutchmen, “prevention is the most important way to decrease the chances that boys and girls to abuse it. Many programs are designed to withstand the pressures children of friends, although in recent years have emerged other trends such as that parents supervise the use, teaching them social and rational use of alcohol at home in order to limit the excesses out of it. However, many of these measures are not enough scientific backing.
The authors sent an e-mail to 5,000 families in 20 municipalities Dutchmen who are participating in the study Family and Health [aimed at reviewing the various processes of socialization of the population as healthy behaviors during adolescence]. Finally, the sample consisted of 428 work, all with both parents and two children aged 13 to 15 years. They are followed for two years.
After measuring through questionnaires ethylic beverage consumption at home and abroad, besides the existence of problems with its consumption [as' do not do homework because of the ingestion], the authors found that 53% had ingested alcohol in the month preceding the study with his father, of whom 73% had done so within the home. 43% had taken ’some drink’ with her mother, most of them at home. On the consumer with friends, 79% of teens surveyed have eaten, half of these cases also, within the family home.
Parental example
And the children follow the parents’ behavior. “The fact that they drink predicts that their offspring will also do inside and outside the home,” the researchers comment.
After computing all the data, the authors found that adolescents who drank more alcohol at home were also the most consumed in bars. And more disturbingly, those who ate larger amounts of ethanol were the only two years later were more likely to develop problems associated with this intake.
“The conclusion is easy to draw. If, first, you drink at home is likely to initially have fewer problems with high alcohol consumption. But our data suggest that household consumption predicts both increased levels of intake within and outside the short term as an increase of the negative consequences associated with their use, “the study concludes.
Recommendations
Haske van der Vorst advises parents who do not want “their children develop patterns of consumption in adolescence will stick tight restrictions on it and monitor their daily activities.”
Despite these data, the authors stress the need “to conduct further work to replicate these results and propose to evaluate the effects of moderators (drinking or not do with parents and friends or not) adolescent consumption separately. Remember, above all, that parents are the ones who should be more aware of their role in preventing the onset of consumption. And for children, this advice: “Alcohol is for adults. Do not drink ever, at least until the age of 16 years,” lead author Dr. reflects research.