Binge Drinking in Teenagers: Influences and Consequences

This research discusses the influences and consequences of binge drinking in teenagers, including familial or parental support, peer pressure, academic failure or personal stress, and governmental policies. Reinforcing the alcohol policy and involving parents, adolescents, and communities in an integrated program will have a positive impact on young adults.

Running head: PUBLIC HEALTH
PUBLIC HEALTH
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Abstract
Alcohol is considered as a normal part of adult and teen social life. The use of alcohol by
young people is harmful because of the risks associated with acute impairment as well as it is a
threat to their long term development and wellbeing. It can therefore be said that with less age,
alcohol consumption can lead to harmful effects. The following is the outline of the research.
Aim
1. To determine teenage drinking patterns and to determine the influence of alcohol on teenagers
physical, mental and social wellbeing.
2. To review the relationship between accessibility of alcohol & binge drinking among teenagers
3. To assess if binge drinking and teenage pregnancy coexists in UK
Literature
Relevant studies were included in the study so that it can be aligned to the topic which is
Binge Drinking. These articles were chosen from January 2000 to June 2010 to understand the
current trends. The method chosen was systematic review quantitative analysis.
Results
From this study, it was found that binge drinking has deleterious consequences on
teenagers. There is also evidence that teenagers not only have easy access but also to cheap
alcohol which gives more opportunity to binge.
Conclusion

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From this public health viewpoint reinforcing the alcohol policy and involving parents,
adolescents and communities in an integrated program will have a positive impact on young
adults.

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Introduction
As the modern cultural traditions, alcohol consumption has become a way to socialize or
a way for relaxation from work or personal stress. Mostly, nowadays, people consume alcohol
for enjoyment or to have a good time with their family and friends. The World Health
Organization (2004), determines that more than 2 billion people consumes alcohol and alcoholic
beverages and within that 76.3 million people has been diagnosed with alcohol related disorders.
Further this report also provided data such as alcohol causes death of 1.8 million people and 58.3
million disability adjusted life years. According to Robinson & Ladder (2009), there is an
alcohol consumption limit as per which men should not drink more 2 drinks per day and a non-
pregnant women should not consume more than 1 drink per day. On the other hand, as per the
data of Royal College of Medical, the safe limit for men is 21 units per week and 14 units per
week for women. As per WHO, Europe is the continent that acquires most of the alcohol
consumers and within that in UK, more than 80% people are social drinkers, whereas 10% do not
drink (Rehm et al., 2003). However, more than 15% people are alcohol abusers as they drink
beyond their sensible levels and are divided in three sections such as hazardous drinkers, harmful
drinking and binge drinking. In this section, the drinking pattern in teenagers will be identified
and the effect of binge drinking on their mental physical and social health will be identified.
Further, the easy availability of alcohol will be established as the reason for binge drinking in
teenagers. Further, the coexistence of binge drinking and teenage pregnancy will also be
discussed in the context of alcoholic abuse.

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Literature review
Binge drinking is a periodic bout of continuous drinking, in which people consume more
than 5 drinks in a row and consumes until the consumer is unable to consume any more alcohol.
According to the Institute of Alcohol Studies, while consuming more than prescribed limit
consumer increases the risk of health complications. There are numerous researchers who
defined it differently as per their research findings. Where Murgraff et al. (1999) define it as the
riskful drinking pattern but occasionally, Wright and Cameron (1997) define it as consumption
of more than 8 unit of alcohol in a row in a short session that affects their social, mental and
physical ability. Davey (1997) incorporates in his research that this drinking pattern is intentional
and people intentionally drink to get drunk. Further, the research intended to understand the
effect of alcoholic overuse on teen’s health was determined. Hibell et al (2003) determined that
UK is leading the consequences of binge drinking, as 54% of teenagers of 15 or 16 years of age
are associated with binge drinking compared to 43% of the rest of the Europe. Further this
research also established the fact that the age of 14 was most sensitive for the binge drinking as
most of the teens at this age, used to consume 6 to 9 units per week, and this rate was not gender
specific as it consisted both boys and girls. The rate of binge drinking is highest in the North
West region of England and the rate increased since 2002 and is found to be associated with
other addictive behavioral issues such as chain smoking in the Youngers and teenagers of UK
(Atkinson et al, 2009) as well as also increased the rate of crimes and anti-social instincts as per
the research of Roberts & Fox (2001). Further binge drinking also increases the number of
school dropouts and increased the chances of teenage pregnancy or risky sexual behaviour (Best
et al, 2006, Coleman and Cater, 2005).

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Further, to understand the increasing risk of alcohol abuse in children, researchers
conducted survey amongst teenagers and young individual irrespective of their gender to
understand the reason of binge or hazardous drinking amongst them. It was found that there are
different level and type of influence that moves such teenagers towards the addiction of binge
drinking, and as per Deas and Thomas (2002), these influences are familial or parental support,
Personal curiosity, peer pressure, academic failure or personal stress, and laws and norms of the
government that provides a window for these teenagers to take support of alcohol to fight their
insecurities. Firstly, research related to familial support will be discussed as the prime aim of the
research conducted by Manning et al. (2009) was to understand the level of harm teenagers feel
while living with abusive parents. The conducted a survey among teenagers whose parents are
alcoholic abusers and found that more than 81% of teenagers have become current drinkers and
within that more than 17% had tried binge drinking in their life time. Further, Deas and Thomas
(2002), conducted a research to understand the effect of presence of alcoholic abusers in the
family and it was found that presence of alcoholic parents or grandparents within the family
increases the risk of alcoholism in children. Secondly, availability of alcohol is one of the
important factor that influences teenagers to drink beyond their limit and for that the
governmental policies are primarily responsible. Researchers conducted surveys to understand
the effect of availability of alcohol to affect drinking pattern of teenagers and it was found that
there is a straight linkage of availability of alcohol, teenage and students drinking patterns.
Further, one group of researchers also tried to understand the increase and decrease of alcohol
prices and the effect of it on drinking pattern of teenagers and they found that, due to price hike
in alcohol and alcoholic beverages, the alcohol consumption in teenagers decreased to a great
extent and similarly decreasing price increases the number of binge drinkers when other factors

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are constant and just the price of alcohol is increasing (Grossman et al 1987; Coate and
Grossman, 1988; Cook and Moore 2002). Further it also observed that decease in price of
alcohol helps to turn the less frequent drinkers into heavy drinkers and also increases the
consequences of alcohol consumption such as higher number of road accidents. The report of
Cook and Moore (2002) showed that increasing the price of alcohol has seen to decrease several
anti-social actions, street accidents and school dropout sin UK and hence, the influence of
governmental policies affects the teenagers by increasing their risk related to binge drinking.
Peer group is another important source of influence due to which maximum teenagers starts
drinking beyond their limit of indulge in binge drinking patterns. To understand the effect of
peers of teenagers’ mentality data from the discussion of Engales (2003) was determined as he
mentioned that teenagers listen to their peer’s suggestion because at that age they wanted to seek
autonomy from their parents and in that course they implement each suggestion in their life
given by their closest peers. Reports from research of Baer (1991) suggests that extensive use of
alcohol is due to the excessive use of alcohol while socializing with their friends. Further reports
also indicated to the point that while discussing their problems with their peer’s teenagers use
alcohol to communicate (Presley et al, 2002). Hastings and Angus (2009) also reported that in
the growing years of teenagers, peers are the primary source of influence and it helps to change
their attitude towards, binge drinking, and drinking related issues and drinking behaviour. Hence,
in the presence of peers who drink excessively and is popular among his or her peers for able to
consume excessive amount of alcohol, teenagers usually follow that peer and in the process
becomes addicted to binge drinking. Therefore, through this literature review all the possible
influences of binge drinking and the pattern of drinking amount teenagers were discussed with
the help of several important and productive research articles.

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Material and methods
As Trafford (2001) mentioned, methodology is the process related roles and regulations
depending on which the evidences are collected from the populations and in this context the
methods and materials used by this research will be presented in this section. Firstly a search
strategy was prepared to understand the previous research was that was conducted to understand
the effect of binge drinking among younger generation or teenagers. the terms that were included
to find out latest research articles are ‘Alcohol intoxication’, ;alcohol binge drinking in
teenagers’, ‘impact of alcohol advertising on young people’, ‘Age of first alcohol use among
young people’ and so on. These phrases and terms were searched in databases such as British
Medical Journal, British Medical Association, PubMed, Science Direct and other research article
databases. This was a systematic review and quantitative analysis as the research was completely
based on the previous research articles and data and depending on those results the direction or
finding of this research was decided. Hence, in this quantitative systematic review total 318
articles were collected from the search results and different exclusion criteria was used to reject
the research articles that was conducted outside the United Kingdom (57 research articles),
duplication of studies (23 research articles), and irrelevant articles (98 articles were found
irrelevant), not research articles, or review articles. These papers were rejected as presence of
these researches in the pool of study would have hampered the effect of the data collection and
the accuracy of the research study would have been hampered therefore, all those factors were
rejected using some exclusion criteria. However, after rejecting these 24 more articles were
found that was not related to the research topics and was not even a research articles whereas
those were newspaper articles, fact sheets, and review articles. Furthermore 22 articles were
rejected due to their time limit. Those 22 research articles were from research conducted in the

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last decade and hence, lost their relevancy in the modern context. Moreover, in the continuing
exclusion criteria 60 studies were rejected because of their irrelevant age group as most of the
studies chose age groups of 25 to 30 years and only 14 studies remained in which the objectives
age group of the interest of the research and was intended to find out the effect of binge drinking
on the health (mental and physical) of teenagers in UK. Therefore with the help of 14 research
articles, this systematic review was conducted and in this young adults with 11-19 years of age
was selected and they were divided in two groups of alcohol consumers and alcohol non
consumers. These participants were selected from three different settings such as schools,
hospitals and community where number of alcohol consumers are high.
Discussion
The primary aim of this research was to understand the key effects of binge drinking
patterns in teenagers of UK and for that purpose, 14 research article from previously undertaken
researchers were collected to summarize them and interpret them in a nutshell. It was an
important discussion as according to the report of chief medical officer of UK, the number of
alcohol consumer teenagers was increasing continuously and this enhanced the public concern as
reports determined that more than 17 million units were consumed by the teenagers in one week.
Therefore it become a serious public concern as addiction to alcohol could lead to several health
social and mental complication in those teenagers as more than 71% of UK teenagers used to
consume alcohol. However, researchers do not believe that this alcohol behaviour generated
within teenagers in weeks or days as Velleman (2009) determined that it was because of several
factors such as presence of alcohol consumer in the family, peers group or nearby relatives that
influences teens to consume alcohol, governmental policies and presence of financial influence
so that they can consume alcohol without any interruption. In this section, the research of Smith

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& Foxcroft (2009) should be included that determined the drinking prevalence in people from 11
to 15 years. It was found that more than 52% of teenagers with 15 years of age was consuming
alcohol and different governmental policies were among the primary reasons they started
consuming alcohol or become binge drinkers. Further, in this process, different researchers
carried out several researches to understand the effect of teenage drinking in different antisocial
activities and in this purpose, this section included a paper from the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration which states that the link between excess drinking and antisocial
activities in very strong as it increases chances of many legal, social mental and physical
concerns amongst teenagers who are addicted to heavy alcoholic consumption. These concerns
were associated with stealing, drug use, fighting, driving with high alcohol consumption that lead
to accidents, as well as increased chance of school dropouts and absence amongst school
children, and to some extent they also increased the chances of self-harm or suicidal activities
among teenagers who consume alcohol to forget their social and personal stress (Greenblatt,
2000). However, when few researches were to understand the effect of this excessive drinking on
the society it was found that due to this high alcohol consumption incidents of sexual and
physical assaults increased, which the researchers linked to the urban infrastructures as it is the
result of less caution parenting and presence of influences like peers and siblings pressure.
Petticrew & Robert (2006) determined that due ti such behavioural issue the teenagers having
alcoholic behaviour were responsible for 50% of street crimes in UK and carried out physical
and mental assaults in the influence of alcohol. However, while discussion about the strength and
limitation, the primary strength of the study was its methodology as with a successful systematic
review the section was able to find out appropriate papers and research articles for the review
having similar objectives and sample size, however the limitation was broader aspect of the

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research. Due to this broader aspect, the research was not being able to focus in one aspect and
further continue the process.
Conclusion
Alcohol consumption is a way to socialize and connect to people as per the modern
tradition and it is perceived as a normal situation to drink alcohol with parents, sibling’s peers or
others to connect. However, beyond a limit the consumption of alcohol can lead to several
situations that is considered anti-social and criminal offense. This cam occur due to binge
drinking, hazardous drinking and harmful drinking habits. In this research, the primary aim was
to understand the drinking habits among teenagers and the effect of their drinking pattern in
social and mental wellbeing of those teenagers. For this process, a systemic review was
conducted in which, from more than 300 articles 14 similar articles were included in the report.
However, besides determining the negative effect, positive effects of alcohol was also
determined and it was mentioned that light and moderate amount of alcohol has been found
effective for medicinal purposes but binge drinking is always harmful for teenagers as they
develop instincts of criminal activities due to the influence of alcohol. In this article all the
negative effect and their reasons were described in relation to binge drinking. Further, the
strength and weakness of the article =s were also discussed.

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Appendix (figures from the above studies)

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