Alcohol Misuse Within the Military

As times become stressful and hard, many people sometimes fall back on alcohol. This is often times seen in many military personal and veterans due to all the stress and PTSD they face while being in highly stressful situations such as war.

In the article, “Alcohol use and craving among Veterans with mental health disorders and mild traumatic brain injury” by Amy Herrold and collogues addresses the issue of mental health disorders and traumatic brain injury and how that effects alcohol usage in veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. This study used the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT-C) and the Penn alcohol Craving Scale (PACS). The results of these test showed that the rates of alcohol usage were extremely high among the veterans who had mental health disorders and mild traumatic brain injury and those that just solely had a mental health disorder and no mild traumatic brain injury.  

Another article looked at something similar, but the subjects of this study were military personal compared to the general population and how alcohol affected these two groups. In the article, “Alcohol use in the military: associations with health and wellbeing” by Michael Waller and collogues examined three different variables in their research. They looked at the “prevalence of drinking in currently serving and former members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) with nationally representative sample of civilians” (Waller). They also looked at what groups would report harmful drinking and what “the association between drinking and general health and the ability to function normally” (Waller). The researchers used the AUDIT scale like Amy Herrold did in her research and they also used social functioning scores (SF36 sub-scales). The results of this study showed that the general population had more risky drinkers than military personal, however this was mainly observed in military personal with younger age and lower ranks. These results also showed that alcohol misuse can harm the general health and lower our social functioning.

This being said, it is beneficial to keep in mind the effects of alcohol misuse and mental health disorders can play a role in misusing alcohol. However, this study focused on a very specific group of people that mainly consisted of being male therefore more research can be done to look at the effects of alcohol misuse among different groups of people.

References

Herrold, Amy A., et al. "Alcohol Use and Craving among Veterans with Mental Health Disorders and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury." Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, vol. 51, no. 9, 2014, pp. 1397-1410., doi:10.1682/jrrd.2013.07.0170.

Waller, Michael et al. “Alcohol use in the military: associations with health and wellbeing.” Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy vol. 10 27. 28 Jul. 2015, doi:10.1186/s13011-015-0023-4