Women Closing the “Drinking Gap,” Catching Up to Men
Women are closing the "drinking gap" and slowly catching up to men in their rates of alcoholism. In the 1980s there were roughly five male alcoholics for every female, but by 2002, that ratio had changed to 2.5 men for every woman alcoholic, and the trend seems to be continuing, according to a new study from Harvard Medical School.
The problem with closing this particular gender gap is that a female alcoholic may do as much damage to her body after four years of drinking as a male alcoholic does in 14 years, said Dr. Shelly Greenfield, a Harvard professor of psychiatry and lead author of the new research.
"The most consistent, and I’d argue, the most important finding in the literature is that it takes longer for women to enter treatment for similar severities of alcohol problems than it does for men," said Dr. Shelly Greenfield. She believes that women should enter medical treatment for alcohol substance dependency disorder about four years earlier than male problem drinkers.
Dr. Greenfield’s research concluded that alcohol abuse does neurological damage more quickly in women than in men because females metabolize alcohol differently. Women can get drunk on fewer drinks than men because they have less alcohol dehydrogenase, an enzyme in the stomach lining that breaks down alcohol. They also develop cirrhosis of the liver more quickly than their male counterparts.
Dr. Greenfield has also been involved in research about gender differences in alcoholism treatment programs. She found that women alcoholics most often turn to their family care physicians for advice, and this puts too much pressure on family doctors to diagnose and treat alcohol dependency, sometimes resulting in delayed or unsuitable treatment options. She also has researched whether single-sex facilities are more effective for women alcoholics and found this might be true mainly for particular sub-groups. Gender-specific treatment may be more appropriate for pregnant women, women who have been abused by men, and those with eating disorders. In one study, Dr. Greenfield found that single-sex approaches were initially effective as mixed gender groups, but after six months, the women in the single-sex group had slightly fewer relapses. She is currently doing a long-term study of this issue.
Another new study, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, found gender differences in the way alcohol reduces serotonin neurotransmission. Dr. Claudia Fahlke from the Department of Psychology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden said that even though the men in her study had been drinking an average of 14 years and the women in the study had been drinking only four, serotonin results were "telescoped" in the female subjects. Since serotonin is linked to depression, and depression is linked to alcohol dependency, this new finding points to the biological way that alcohol dependence can lead to depression, especially in women, according to Dr. Carla Green, a researcher with the Kaiser Permanente Northwest Center for Health Research and a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University.
