RESEARCH INTO ALCOHOLISM

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29108, 21 January 1960, Page 18

RESEARCH INTO ALCOHOLISM

“Victims Of Stress Vulnerable” (By a Reuter Correspondent) SAN FRANCISCO. The Californian Department of Public Health hopes to develop a system of “detecting budding alcoholics before they bloom.” Dr. Wendell Lipscombe says the first two years of investigation suggest that victims of “high stress” are most vulnerable to heavy drinking. “High stress” can be created by obvious frustrations, “such as a nagging wife, a bothersome mother-in-law, or an unbalanced family budget, as well as the vexations of one-way streets, aeroplane noise and the accoutrements of the atomic age.” Plenty of “high stress” can be brewed in the subconscious mind, Dr. Lipscombe reported. “The victim is troubled but doesn’t know what troubles him.” After months of scientific preparation the investigators perfected an interview pattern through which they hope to be able to ferret out people “at risk” or in the early stages « alcoholism. Thousands of men and women in various occupations will be interviewed regularly over • period of at least five years. If the first theories in the study are borne out, the report said, “it may also be possible to find ways of alleviating or dissipating the stress and thus blocking the onset of alcoholism.” In moving toward this goal of preventive alcoholic medicine, the investigators have already interviewed more than 800 persons. They found that “the assump- 1 tion that the ‘high stress’ group will also tend to include persons who may be ‘at risk’ of developing alcoholism has not been disproved,” Dr. Lipscombe said. They also found that the highstress people were proportionally more afflicted with the “wellknown hand-maidens of tension” —headaches, ulcers and common colds.