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Teenage alcoholism on the rise

Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day

The creation of alternatives for children threatened by alcoholism is essential to overcoming this social plague. If our government wants healthy teenagers it must organize alternative pastimes: sport, culture or arts.

Child alcoholism is on the rise in Rivne region. Doctors are concerned and characterize the spread of alcoholism among teens as critical. 352 children are on the preventive medicine register because of their episodic consumption of alcohol, and not all of them are from disadvantaged families. However, there is no specialized medical institution for alcohol- or drug-addicted children in Rivne. Ihor Myroniuk, chief doctor of the territorial medical association for psychiatric and addiction treatment, commented on the situation:  

“During the case study, we conducted a survey among schoolchildren aged 12-15 years. We found that slightly more than 80 percent of those surveyed had consumed low- or high-alcohol content drinks. Once we had to treat a 16-year-old boy who was in a state close to alcoholic psychosis (also referred to as delirium tremens). Such states occur only in people who were heavy drinkers for at least five to seven years. Last year, we treated 42 children for alcohol poisoning. We had two cases when recruits were exempted from military service because of alcoholism; there are also young men who were granted deferment of service for the same reason.

“Not only boys are affected. Researchers found that alcohol-consumption among girls doubled recently (in the past, the ratio of booze-prone boys to girls was 4:1, today it stands at 2:1).  

Alcoholism is spreading both among rural and urban children. Most of these teenagers live in disadvantaged families. Many of them have alcoholic parents. However, sometimes hospital resuscitation departments receive children from well-off families diagnosed with alcohol poisoning.  

“Today there are many restrictions on alcohol consumption and drinking in public places. Despite all this, the child alcoholism situation is going from bad to worse. Teens’ leisure is unsupervised. Relevant persons are not held responsible according to administrative law. In my opinion, lecturing children about the harmful effects of alcohol is not enough. It has become inefficient.”

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