15D Health and Social Care Issue – Addiction
Highlights:
1. Elements of Addiction
Physiological craving
- An intense feeling of need and prolonged desire; yearning for the substance or behavior
Withdrawal symptoms
- Show negative emotional responses / discomfort when attempting to cut down the substance or stop the behaviour
Tolerance
- Increasing amounts of the substance or the frequency of behavior to maintain same level of satisfaction
2. Types of Addiction
Substance
- Drug (drug addiction)
- Alcohol (alcohol abuse)
- Tobacco (smoking)
Behavioural
- Pathological Gambling
- Compulsive Buying
- Internet Addiction
- Workaholism
Reading:
Application:
Coming Soon
3. Reasons for Addictions
Community
- The higher the availability of a substance in the community and higher cultural acceptance of social use of the substance
Family
- Persistent family conflicts and problems
- Parents’ influence
Peer
- Peer pressure
Individual
- Physical and mental aspects
- physical – with psychiatric disorders such as depression or anxiety
- mental – with poor impulse control or low stress tolerance / poor problem-solving skills
- Personal history / experience
- from disrupted homes or have been abused
- has the initial experience of changing his/her mood with a substance
4. Impacts on health and social care systems
Health Care System
- Physical and psychological illnesses – Increase the burden of health care system
Social Care System
- Behavioural and Social Problems – Increase the burden of social care system
5. Possible Means and Solutions
Medication
- Reducing craving, replacing one drug (e.g. heroin) with another (e.g. methadone), blocking the effect of a certain drug, causing unpleasant reactions when the addicted drug is used, or improving one’s psychological health
Behavioural therapy
- Building skills to resist addictive activity
- Replacing addictive activity with constructive and rewarding ones, and
- Improving problem-solving abilities
Treatment provided by health care professionals
- Clinic
- In-patient Service
- Community Service and rehabilitation
Support services provided by social care professionals
- Counselling
- Talks and Workshops
- Health ambassadors
- Support Network
Latest Update: October 2019
Power-point
Assessing my learning
- What are the impacts and implications of addiction?
- How can we help the addicts at different levels?