Drug Action Week - Day 2 - Teens in the Grip of Grog

Article from Herald Sun - Michael Carr-Gregg - June 09, 2009 12:00am

AUSTRALIA is in a mental health crisis. It's not impending. It's here. Government figures show one in four people under 25 will suffer a mental illness.
While we're worrying about lifting the retirement age and caring for our ageing population, it will cost billions to treat people who develop mental illness in their youth.
This bill will soar if we don't act now. The ready availability of alcohol and its enthusiastic promotion to make it a normal part of society are major contributors to the youth mental health problem.
According to the 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey, more than 20 per cent of 14 to 19-year-olds drink alcohol weekly.
A third of boys aged 12-17 downed seven-plus drinks at a time and one in three girls put away five or more in a session.
One in 20 students put away 50 standard drinks or more in a month. An Australian study published in international medical journal The Lancet found that alcohol caused 27 per cent of deaths involving 15 to 29-year-olds in 2002.
That's tragic, but the physiological effects of drinking on young, developing brains are much more insidious.
Brain development continues until the age of 20. Damage from alcohol during this time can be long-term and irreversible.
Adolescents need only drink half as much as adults to suffer the same memory loss.
Kids who binge once a week, or increase their drinking between the ages of 18 and 24, increase their chances of not attaining the goals of young adulthood like marriage, educational attainment, employment and financial independence.
While alcohol consumption rates among young people have remained stable for 30 years, what's really disturbing is the rising intensity of drinking in a small proportion of young people, especially girls.

NOTE: - Michael Carr-Gregg ( is a psychologist and leading writer and author of adolescent behaviour books)