Measuring Health and Diseases - Essay Example

Measuring health related quality of life is of greater importance regarding clinicians and policymakers. In order to reach in an accurate measuring of health, clinicians and policy makers adopt various methods. They make use of either the discriminative or evaluative instruments (Guyatt, Feeny, and Patrick). Substance abuse is quite common in the modern society that majority of the people use drugs, alcohol and tobacco for various reasons, regardless of its significant cost. Many researchers have identified the ill effect of the drug abuse. The toll of this abuse can be seen in the hospitals and emergency departments where people have been admitted with diseases like physical trauma. The ill effect of the drugs can also be seen in the increasing number of the criminals in jails which clearly demonstrates the association between drugs and crime. Measuring substance abuse is a significant area in the medical field. Modern science has implemented many different ways to estimate the impact of treatment on drug abuse. Farrokh Alemi & Heibatollah Baghi in their online article, Measurement of Substance Abuse Treatment Outcomes Over Time, rightly identify these ways as; “percentage of positive drug tests, probability of drug use, percentage of patients abstaining from any use, total number of days of use, daily probability use and average days till next use…” (Alemi and Heibatollah). It makes clear the fact that measuring health related with substance abuse has an elite role in the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. The journal article entitled How Science Has Revolutionized the Understanding of Drug Addiction by Nora D. Volkow illustrates the issue of drug addiction and its diagnosis. Author leads the reader to think about various health issues related with drug abuse especially among the adolescents. Measuring diseases and health deterioration is a significant area of measurement in the process of diagnosing health issues related with drug abuse. Author’s comment permits the reader to modify his/her existing knowledge about health problems related with drug abuse. In this respect one can advocate authors view; “Tobacco use killed approximately 100 million people during the 20th century and, if current smoking trends continue, the cumulative death toll for this century has been projected to reach 1 billion” (Addiction and Health). Adolescent who follow the practices of drug abuse often show the symptoms of low academic performance, early drop out of school, and unplanned pregnancies. Severe behavioral disorders such as anxiety, depression, introvert and growing inferiority complex endow with psychological crisis among the people who used drugs (Volkow). Professionals of healthcare and medical fields often evaluate various methods of measurements to analyze the relevant health issues in recent times. Medical field have already identified the fact that the excessive use of drugs play a relevant part in wide area of substance abuse. One can measure the health issues of drug addiction through a person’s developing behavior of drug seeking. The process of measuring drug abuse included two considerable components like measurement and the methods of the measurements. “There are several methods for making these measurements: study subjects could self report their blood pressure reading from their last medical checkup or blood pressures could be measured using a sphygmomanometer” (Sloboda p.3). The role of brain and its related organs have a considerable role in the process of transforming the status of drug addiction. Structural and chemical changes in the brain resulted nerve problems and other kinds of behavior disorders. Sussman and Ames (p.22) assert that; “The perceptive suggests that following voluntary repetitive drug use behavior, changes in the brain occur and these structural and chemical changes in the brain affect the addictive process.” Alcoholism is another example of substance abuse which has predominant influence in the lives of modern people. National Institute of Health, in their journal, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has documented that “Alcoholism is a disease. The craving that an alcoholic feels for alcohol can be as strong as the need for food or water. An alcoholic will continue to drink despite serious family, health, or legal problems” (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism). This observation enables one to understand the prime influence of alcohol in a person’s life. The study the National Institute of Health acknowledges that alcoholism expresses various symptoms like other diseases. They are as follows: * Craving--A strong need, or urge, to drink. * Loss of control--Not being able to stop drinking once drinking has begun. * Physical dependence--Withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, sweating, shakiness, and anxiety after stopping drinking. * Tolerance--The need to drink greater amounts of alcohol to get "high." Identifying the symptoms of alcoholism will be helpful in measuring health of the alcohol addicts or alcohol dependents. Alcohol abuse, like the drug abuse, causes for various physical as well as mental disorders. An online article entitled; ‘Alcohol misuse’ identifies that incessant use of alcohol leads to mental and physical disorders. The article makes out mental disorders like, depressed mood, nervousness, and insomnia. The physical complications of alcohol, as the article points out, include ulcer, gastric, liver disease, and hypertension. Along with these disorders, alcoholism also causes for accidents or injuries and familial disorders, poor memory or concentration, evidence of self-neglect and failed treatment for depression. Legal and social problems due to alcohol use may vary. But the common problems derived from alcoholism are, marital problems, domestic violence, child abuse or neglect, missed work, and so on (Alcohol misuse). Measuring health can never exclude the study of the ill-effects of smoking that prevails in the society even after many attempts to regulate them. “Smoking cessation programs measure outcomes in terms of abstinence from or reduction in smoking. These outcomes can be measured through self-report by the smoker, through measurement with a biological marker of smoking, or through a combination of both” (Stevens and Muñoz). As in the case of drug abuse, in smoking also, only the person who is addicted can make a proper measurement of the outcomes. Many researchers have identified the relation between smoking and other types of substance abuse. In their online article, Substance Abuse, The American Council on Science and Health makes it clear when they rightly put it as, “Among teenagers, smoking is strongly linked to other types of substance abuse. Smokers greater drug use may reflect both their willingness to try risky things and the fact that teenage smokers are more likely than nonsmokers to spend time with people who have access to illegal drugs” (Substance Abuse). While reading through the article, one can understand the fact that smoking and drug abuse and mutually interrelated. Regarding the measurement of health Stephen B. Hulley comments, “Measurements should be sensitive enough to detect differences in a characteristic that are important to the investigator” (Stephen B. Hulley p.45). A review of Mueser et al (1990) on 32 studies published so far showed lifetime prevalence estimates of: 12.3-50% for alcohol misuse and/or dependence; 12.5-35.8% for cannabis misuse; 11.3-31% for misuse/dependence of stimulants; 5.7-15.2% for hallucinogens; 3.5-11.3% for sedatives; and 2-9% for opioids (Michael). Michael clearly identifies the threat of substance abuse when he says, “A large number of studies have linked substance misuse in schizophrenia with male gender, high incidence of homelessness, more pronounced psychotic symptoms, non-adherence with medication, poor prognosis, violence and aggression. The latter has been proved by clinical, epidemiological and longitudinal prospective studies of unselected birth cohorts” (Michael). Poor social integration will not be sufficient to alleviate the increased risk for aggression and violence. The study of substance abuse reveals that children who have the tendency to experience multiple risk factors may follow it their future life also. Hawkins et al make it clear when they rightly remark, “Individuals experiencing multiple risk factors and few protective influences during infancy, childhood, and early adolescence are at greatest risk for abusing substances during late adolescence and early adulthood” (Hawkins, Arthur, and Catalano). The previous words undoubtedly prove that measuring health and regulating the substance use should be centered on the adolescents. Different studies conducted overtime have also identified the possibility of spreading diseases to children, if their mother was an addict to substance abuse. To conclude, one can infer that the articles analyzed for the study clearly indicate the measurement approaches to health and disease. After analyzing the substance abuse, it is understood that the abuse of alcohol, drugs and smoking can be measured in various ways. The health condition of a drug addict can be measured through systematic ways which include different tests, analyzing the probability of use, measuring the number of patients refraining from any use, total number of days of use, daily probability use and average days till next use, and so on. It is possible for the researchers and medical practitioners to apply assorted tests for such measurements of health actually aimed to decrease the death toll of diseased people with substance abuse. Many have recognized the importance of the studies of drug abuse among the adolescents and insisted that eradicating substance abuse, especially drug abuse, will have a great impact in assuring the bright future of a country. While reading through the articles selected for the present study, one can infer that majority of them are really effective in identifying what is substance abuse and measuring health, though some of them were only trying to explain the ill effects of the substance abuse. Works cited: Addiction and Health. National institute of drug abuse. http://www.drugabuse.gov/scienceofaddiction/health.html 27 May 2010 Alemi Farrokh, Baghi Heibatollah. “Measurement of Substance Abuse Treatment Outcomes Over Time”, Manage Health Care. Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 129–136 c 2010 Alcohol misuse. 27 May 2010 . “FAQ for the General Public” National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism National Institute of Health, USA govt. GH Guyatt, DH Feeny, and DL Patrick. Measuring health-related quality of life. McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 1993 Apr 15. Online. J. David Hawkins, Michael W. Arthur, and Richard F. Catalano. Preventing Substance Abuse. The University of Chicago, 1995. KR Stevens, LR. Muñoz “National Institutes of Health Cigarette smoking: Evidence to guide measurement.” U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2004 Aug;27(4):281-92. Soyka Michael. “Substance misuse, psychiatric disorder and violent and disturbed behavior.” The British Journal of Psychiatry. (2000) 176: 345-350. Online. Stephen B. Hulley. Designing clinical research. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007 p.45. Substance Abuse. The American Council on Science and Health. Online. 27 May 2010 Sussman Yale Steven, Ames L. Susan. Drug abuse: concepts, prevention, and cessation. Illustrated Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2008. Sloboda Zili. Epidemiology of drug abuse. Illustrated edition.Publisher Springer, 2005 Volkow D. Nora. National Institute on Drug Abuse Addiction: "Drugs, Brains, and Behavior - The Science of Addiction" Oct 22, 2009 27 May 2010 Read More