Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Research 9. England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Abstract

SummaryThis paper reviews alcohol problems research in England, Wales and Northern Ireland over the last 25 years. Published work in the British Journal of Addiction, the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, and Journal of Studies on Alcohol form the central sources. It describes how the sixties laid the foundation for innovative methodology across the whole gamut of social science investigation. Important issues to emerge during the seventies were the systematic application of epidemiological techniques to populations of alcoholic patients, the development of the provisional description of the alcohol dependence syndrome and the seventy of alcohol dependence questionnaire, the exploitation of biochemical procedures to newly conceived animal models of dependence, the controlled investigation of brain function and the evaluation of relatively established notions of treatment. During the eighties, alcoholic liver disease, alcohol‐induced hypertension and the fetal alcohol syndrome became topics of interest; biological and genetic research burgeoned; the economics of alcohol abuse, the precipitants of relapse and the role of the community were analysed. Some insights into funding and policy are discerned with indications for future directions.