New assessment centre seen as focal point for action against alcoholism

Press, 16 January 1979, Page 13

New assessment centre seen as focal point for action against alcoholism

By

JOHN BROWN

New Zealanders sipped, gulped, and guzzled their way through six million glasses of alcohol each day during the recent festive season.

For most of the counti/’s 1.6 M regular drinkers the only effect was a mild hangover. For a significant minority, however, the annual binge was part of their downhill slide towards alcoholism.

Heavy drinking during Christmas and New Year is accepted as normal; and so, too, is it for the other 50 weeks of the year. Thousands of people from the age of 12 years upwards are placed at risk. Largely male-dominated bars are breeding grounds for the insidious extension of immature drinking habits. Huge booze barns with their adjacent car parks make a mockery of the country’s new-found desire to reduce the carnage on the roads.

Sports clubs are about to launch an unseemly drive to extend the rights to purvey liquor. Reams of archaic laws inhibit the ’“civilised” consumption of alcohol. Schools refuse to admit that many thousands of their pupils are regular drinkers.

Hospitals, stretched to the limit of economic resources, must count on 25 per cent of beds being occupied by alcohol-related cases. Industry loses millions of dollars each year

because of alcohol abuse. Unions and management turn a blind eye but the taxpayer foots a bill of about S3OOM a year to cope with the problems caused by excessive drinking.

It is against this dismal backdrop that the plight of the country’s 120,000 “hazardous” drinkers and the 53,000 alcoholics must be viewed. For most of us it is comforting to think that alcoholic problems are based in the “skid row” area. Facts do not bear this out for it is 22 times more likely for the company manager to have an alcohol problem than it is for workers on the shop floor.

Only a highly selected minority receive treatment for alcoholism while many thousands struggle on bringing down with them their families and friends.

Recognising that New Zealand can no longer afford in human or financial terms to finance ineffective and costly treatment for alcoholism, the North Canterbury Hospital Board has set up a new venture to bring alcohol treatment into the heart of the community. Its Alcohol Assessment Centre at 24 Cashel Street is a brave new step aimed at stemming the destructive tide of alcohol abuse. With a community health grant of more than $90,000, the board is prepared to

supplement already successful programmes of treatment at its Mahu Clinic and Queen Mary Hospital. The pleasing facade of this once grand inner city home and the welcoming “non-hospital” interior is an important breakthrough. Stripped of clinical connotations, the Centre is an example that health services are part of a community and not separate from it.

The need for the Centre was recognised by all groups involved in the treatment of alcohol and drug abuse in Christchurch. The North Canterbury Hospital Board accepted the challenge placed before it by these groups and put the unit as one of its top priorities. Its role as a re-

ferral agency is naturally enhanced because all the treatment groups have a vested interest in its success.

Destined to become the focal, point for communityaction on alcohol and drug abuse, staff at the centre hope to form close links with ward staff in hospitals where large numbers of alcohol-related cases are admitted. For some the Centre will be the “fence around the top of the cliff.”

Some clients have already been assessed and referred for follow-up treat-

ment. The first major programme begins next month with short-day treatments. Closely allied to all work at the Centre is a programme to help those with drug problems. The drug abuse counsellor from Princess Margaret Hospital will spend much of her time working from the Centre.

All general practitioners will be told of the Centre’s aims and treatment procedures. The city’s magistrates and probation officers are well aware, too, of the important role which the unit will play in saving human talent which might otherwise destroy itself.

Hand-in-hand with its treatment programme the Centre is geared to “sell” itself to the public. In

schools, youth groups, in factories and service clubs, staff from the Centre will give advice and education on the place of alcohol in the society.

Under no illusions that it must work on new ground, the Centre’s staff of psychologists, an occupational therapist, and social workers have formed a team approach to their clients.

The co-ordinator of the Centre, Ms Lindsay Image, a determined and spontaneous psychologist with

wide experience in working with people at Mahu Clinic, applies an outwardly calm approach to all her work. Number 24 Cashel Street must “be” part of the community and be recognised as such by all those needing help, she believes.

Her view is echoed by Dr Clay Rivers, who arrived from the United States last month to work at the Centre for a year. He is assistant professor of psychology at the University of Nebraska and director there of an alcohol training programme. He has done post doctoral work at Havard Medical School on many aspects of community mental health of which alcohol and drug abuse form a part. The arrival of Dr Rivers, his wife and two children, in Christchurch on the evening of Saturday, December 23, and the manner in which his future colleagues made him at home, bodes well for the future of the Centre.

With shops closed and Christmas just hours away, the Centre staff stocked up the Rivers’s hospital board house with all they thought necessary for a family Christmas. “We quickly felt part of the community,” Dr Rivers said.

Making the new Centre part of the community and responsive to its needs will be No. 1 priority for the Centre in 1979.