Alcoholism is a mental health disorder that generally develops over time as a person's desire to drink and need to drink in larger quantities to induce pleasurable effects increases. Some alcoholics continue for many years to function adequately in their life before their alcoholism begins to have significant negative consequences, while others are met with the negative consequences of alcoholism early on.
Basics
Alcoholism is the term used commonly to describe a person who drinks too much and drinks despite the negative consequences it has on his life. Mental health professionals refer to alcoholism as alcohol addiction or dependence.
Significance
Alcoholism or alcohol dependence has a significant hold on the life and mind of the individual it afflicts. According to MayoClinic.com, alcoholism can actually change the make-up of chemicals in a person's brain and cause her body to require the consumption of alcohol to maintain the chemical balance in the brain and induce positive feelings.
Considerations
Alcoholism can affect the mental stability and functioning of children who are raised by alcoholics. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, or AACAP, these children might isolate themselves from their peers in an effort to reduce the chances of people finding out about the alcoholism and increase the control in their own life by overachieving in school.
Also, children of alcoholic parents might experience other feelings such as guilt, anxiety related to the problems within their home, shame of how they live, lack of trust in others, anger with both drinking and non-drinking parents and depression due to the helplessness they feel, reports the AACAP.
Types
Alcoholism can affect a person's mental functioning. Intoxication with alcohol will impair a person's judgment, make it hard for her to learn new things, impair her ability to move events into long-term memory and increase the chances that she will become violent or aggressive, reports MayoClinic.com. Over the long term, alcoholism can cause chronic memory problems, decreased brain function, neurological problems, mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety and dementia, notes MayoClinic.com.
Treatment
To reduce the severity of the mental effects of alcoholism, treatment should be engaged in as soon as possible. A person must be open to engaging in treatment and be willing to admit he has a problem with alcohol in order to increase the chances that treatment will be effective. Treatment may include inpatient or outpatient psychotherapy, family therapy, group therapy and support groups.
HelpGuide.org reports that to overcome alcoholism, a person has to change the way he thinks about alcohol, his relationships with others, the way he deals with problems and how he functions in society. Treatment can be hard because it is easy for alcoholics to be consumed by their mind's persuasion that one more drink will not hurt, notes HelpGuide.org.
