Introduction
Health professionals are facing myriad challenges when working with alcoholics who have been diagnosed with some psychiatric disorders. Great challenge lies on the inability or to assess the patient’s condition because alcoholism can coexist with, or result to different psychological challenges. Sometimes, alcoholism in the patient is worsened by the symptoms of the existing psychological disorder. In order to ameliorate diagnostic precision, clinicians need to understand the effects of alcohol on these patients. Among the most common psychological conditions that alcoholics are always diagnosed with include, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, dementia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia among many others. In as much as the ill social effects are the prevalent manifestations of the interaction of alcohol abuse and mental disorders, there exists some important changes to the problem that should be understood. Key to accurate diagnostic of psychiatric condition is the comprehension of the effects of alcohol on an individual with underlying mental conditions. Imperatively, the evaluation of the impacts of alcohol use on an individual with psychiatric disorder is valuable in averting problems arising from the correlationship between the specific psychological disorder and alcohol use.
Effects of Alcohol Consumption
Clinical depression
Alcohol consumption interferes with the successful pharmacological treatment of people with clinical depression. Paradoxically, individuals whose drinking does not advance to the level of an alcohol-use disorder, liquor-dependency can have an inimical result on depressive disorder and its symptoms and can lessen the impact of treatment for depression. Some independent researches have postulated that depression patients with heavy drinking habits tend to fair poorly in the treatment of the mental disorder than the patients who do not use alcohol (Churchill &Farrell). There exists a pool of evidence for a strong connection between level of drinking and level of depressive symptoms. One such evidence is that depressed people who are currently heavy drinkers, experience worse depression treatment outcomes. Also, another study has revealed that the level of standard alcohol use is notably linked to abysmal response to fluoxetine in depression patients who were not using alcohol. Moreover, patients with depressive symptoms are more likely to opt out of a treatment intervention because of the inability to make a sound decision that is brought about by alcohol consumption. Clearly, alcohol use has a negative impact of reducing the successful treatment of depression.
Apart from interfering with successful treatment of depressive symptoms, heavy alcohol consumption produces or aggravates the signs of the psychological disorder through acute prospective mechanisms. The first technique is associated with the direct medicinal effects of alcohol consumption. Indeed, average quantities of alcohol can lessen the availability of tryptophan, which is a precursor to serotonin. Medicinally, the etiology of depression has been attributed to the low levels of serotonin. Secondly, use of alcohol causes or augments depressive symptoms concomitantly through its impacts on the psychosocial functioning of the individual. Consequently, an individual develops feelings of feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and low self-worth. Thirdly, heavy drinking of alcohol may hamper treatment seeking and abidance to psychotherapy and antidepressant drugs. Furthermore, alcohol abuse has a negative impact on cognitive functioning thereby interfering with the adoption of alternative or adaptive methods to the negative effect of any depression. Reliance on alcohol use as a strategy of coping with the depressive effects results in more drinking problems and can even advance to alcohol and drug dependency disorders. Therefore, depressed people who consume alcohol may at a risk of developing alcohol-related complications.
Bipolar Disorder
Alcohol and bipolar disorder possess a tight and intricate relationship. Not many psychological disorders are as closely interlinked with alcohol use as bipolar disorder. As a result, the effects of alcohol consumption on a bipolar individual appear subtle. Such effects only appear worse or more exacerbated only if the individual is double diagnosed with bipolar disorder and alcoholism (Li et al.). Alcohol temporarily relieves a bipolar disorder person of the negative symptoms of the disease. Intense feelings of hopelessness fluctuating to sudden emotions of happiness, or numbness are calmed through usage of alcohol. This effect is important in a social setting such as meetings in which some kind of calmness is needed. However, this is a short-term effect of alcohol usage by a bipolar individual and it increases the likelihood of worsening the disorder later on. An explanation to this effect is that, alcohol has sedating effects and as such, it intensifies the symptoms of the disorder. In a similar manner, alcohol has neuroleptic effects to some medications that are used to relieve the negative symptoms of bipolar disorder. Evidently, alcohol consumption increases the negative effects of bipolar disorder in either direction.
Dementia
Heavy alcohol use leads someone who has dementia symptoms to develop a long-term memory loss and total memory loss. For people who have dementia disorder, heavy alcohol totally damages the hippocampus (Wiegmann et al.). Hippocampus is a brain structure that plays a crucial role in enabling individuals to create and keep memories. When this brain structure is destroyed, the long-term memory is also affected. This is because alcohol is known to destroy human nerve cells. Another explanation for the total memory loss effect of alcohol on person with dementia is that consumption of alcohol cause deficiency of vitamin B-1, or thiamine which is crucial in supplying the brain cells with energy. Usage of thiamine is therefore influenced by alcohol consumption. Alcohol also results in loss of appetite which means that a person with dementia will fail to eat a healthy diet that can result on them missing important ingredients. Heavy drinking inflames the stomach linings, thereby affecting how the nutrients are absorbed. Actions such as vomiting that result from hazardous drinking keeps the stomach and the ileum from assimilation of nutrients. Thiamine deficiency is therefore at the centre of total memory loss.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Besides dementia, bipolar disorder, and depression, alcohol use affects people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well. Firstly, individuals with ADHD who have resorted to alcohol drinking develop alcohol use disorder. Alcohol use disorder is likely to be developed by these individuals because ADHD is one of the risk factors in development of the former (Spera et al.). In addition, alcohol drinking results in binge-drinking especially at the early stages of adulthood. Thirdly, alcohol abuse among the people with ADHD results in increased sensitivity to alcohol’s effects. Scientifically, it has been proven that individuals with ADHD show more symptoms of alcohol impairment than those patients who do not drink. Fourthly, alcohol use exacerbates the symptoms in ADHD patients. Illustratively, ADHD signs such as compulsiveness and difficulty in focusing can be worsened by alcohol consumption. Essentially ADHD symptoms that are associated with cognition, decision making, memory, and speech are greatly impacted. Moreover, alcohol consumption also increases an ADHD patient’s chances of contracting other physical health challenges such as increased heart rate and development of hypertension. Undoubtedly, the rising cases of strokes, heart attacks, among ADHD patients can be attributed to alcohol use.
Schizophrenia
People with schizophrenia like other mental sicknesses, are always affected by alcohol consumption. One of the effects of using alcohol by schizophrenic individuals is that the habit can degenerate to be an alcohol use disorder (AUD). Simply put, schizophrenic individuals are more likely develop alcoholism because of the way alcohol impacts psychological disorders. For instance, alcohol consumption impacts people with some disorders more critically, masking the symptoms of such maladies (Subramaniam et al.). In schizophrenic individuals, alcohol dulls their senses the same way as it does to most individuals with other psychological disorders. Chemically, alcohol is a central nervous system (CNS) depressant and such it numbs the emotions of schizophrenic individuals whenever they use it. Several studies have revealed that alcohol consumption has a euphoric effect on schizophrenic individuals than people who do not have the disease. As a result, schizophrenic individuals are more likely to consume alcohol more often as a hiatus from their symptoms and raise their sense of wellbeing. With increased alcohol consumption the schizophrenics become more prone to develop alcohol use disorder. The overall effects of alcohol usage are the schizophrenic’s strained physical health and social relationships.
Schizophrenia in itself possesses a two dimensional relationship with alcohol consumption. As aforementioned earlier, the relationship that has been advanced is that in which the symptoms of the disease affect an individual in a way that they develop AUD. The second segment of the relationship between schizophrenia and alcohol abuse is that one in which alcohol abuse amplify the symptoms of schizophrenia. The common effects of alcohol coupled with the symptoms of schizophrenia, can make the schizophrenics to lose their inhibitions and act violently. In essence, alcohol consumptions can make the individuals to take actions that they might not have taken, actions that are not limited to self-harm and suicidal attempts. Undeniably, there have been some deaths that have associated with alcohol abuse that arise from suicides. From the psychological point of view, many of these deaths are associated with severe mental illnesses conjoined with alcohol consumption. In instances where alcohol use does not cause suicidal thoughts and death related cases, it can also make the schizophrenic to develop some mental challenges such as the psychosis. Accordingly, the thoughts suicide, self-harm, and psychosis are the amplified schizophrenic symptoms by alcohol.
Conclusion
In summary, it is important to assess the effects of alcohol use on a person with an underlying psychological condition to understand how the problems arising from such coexistence can be prevented when they occur. Before analysis of the effects of alcohol on a psychological disorder patient, any healthcare practitioner should have the baseline conception of alcoholic impact on brain functioning. The basic guideline is that alcohol dulls the human senses making them unaware of the occurrences in their surroundings. Suppression of the CNS together with the existing psychological condition culminates to the physical manifestations in terms of effects. A common result among all effects of alcohol abuse on a psychological disorder individual is the increased prevalence of an existing psychiatric disorder’s symptoms. Other effects of alcohol on an individual are specific to certain psychological conditions. However, some disorders share one or more effect in terms of the physical manifestations. Due to this effect, it is basically important to explore the effect of alcohol on the intellectual functioning of individuals with psychological conditions.
Works Cited
Churchill, Awaworyi, and Lisa Farrell. “Alcohol and Depression: Evidence from the 2014 Health Survey for England.” Drug and Alcohol Dependence, vol.180, pp. 86-92, 2017. Web.
Li, Chengxi, et al. “Cognitive Impairment in Individuals with Bipolar Disorder with and Without Comorbid Alcohol and/or Cocaine Use Disorders.” Journal of affective disorders, vol. 272, pp. 355-62, 2020.
Spera, Vincenza, et al. “Does Cannabis, Cocaine and Alcohol Use Impact Differently on Adult Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Clinical Picture?” Journal of Clinical Medicine, vol.10, no.1481, 2021. Web.
Subramaniam, Mythily, et al. “Hazardous Alcohol Use among Patients with Schizophrenia and Depression.” Alcohol, vol. 65, pp.63-69, 2017.
Wiegmann, Caspar, et al. “Alcohol and Dementia–What is the Link? A Systematic Review.” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, vol.16, 87-99, 2020.