Teens turn to drink after tragedy

Teens turn to drink after tragedy
Teenagers who get caught up in a major disaster may need help to stop them turning to drink, according to a study. Researchers in the Netherlands have found evidence to suggest that young people turn to alcohol in large numbers to cope after a disaster. Their findings, published in The Lancet, contradict some other studies into post traumatic stress disorder. But the researchers said experts should be aware of the risks when treating young people involved in disasters. Dr Sijmen Reijneveld and colleagues at the Netherlands Organisation of Applied Scientific Research looked at children caught up in a deadly fire two years ago.

Cafe fire
On New Year's Day 2001, a fire ripped through a cafe in Volendam in the west of the country. It injured 250 young people and killed 14. At the time of the disaster, 124 children, aged between 12 and 15, from a school in Volendam were involved in a study examining the impact of a health promotion programme. Of these, 31 were in the cafe at the time of the fire.

Alcohol abuse can occur when people want to forget what has happened
David Trickey,
London's Traumatic Stress Clinic,

That study also included 830 students from two other schools, about 80km from the town.
Dr Reijneveld used this study to examine the impact of the fire on children from the Volendam school five months after the incident. He found that they were three times more likely to suffer from mental health problems compared to students at the other two schools. These included depression, anxiety, an inability to think clearly and aggression. These findings, which were expected, applied to those children who had been directly involved in the fire and also those who were not. However, the study also found that Volendam students were four times more likely to be drinking excessive amounts of alcohol. Those in the cafe at the time of the fire were 14 times more likely to be abusing alcohol. In addition, girls were twice as likely to be drinking too much than boys.

"Our findings show that adolescents are inclined to react to severe stressful events with excessive use of alcohol," the researchers wrote. Experts agree that excessive drinking at such a young age is a problem, not least because it can be a hard habit to break. Drinking too much can, over the longer term, increase the risks of a range of serious health problems, including liver and heart disease, brain damage and stroke. The Dutch researchers said the findings could help officials to draw up better programmes for young people involved in major disasters. "This might help policy-makers and researchers to incorporate prevention and treatment strategies to reduce excessive use of alcohol if a disaster involves adolescents and to prevent alcohol dependence," they said.

Drink to forget
David Trickey, a clinical child psychologist at London's Traumatic Stress Clinic, said the findings were interesting. "Some studies have suggested that adolescents turn to drink after a disaster but others have not found any link," he told BBC News Online. "Alcohol abuse can occur when people want to forget what has happened. "They may be having flashbacks, intrusive thoughts or dreaming about it. They want to push those thoughts out of their brain. They get drunk to try to forget but it can be a difficult habit to break." He said treatments were available to help children in this type of situation to overcome such problems. "The treatment of choice would be cognitive behaviour therapy but we would also incorporate it with family therapy. This can help the family to reassure the child. It is very effective."