Running Head: Social Work With People With Substance Problems In Scotland - Essay Example

Mrs. Smart split up from her first husband just after Leanne was born. This man was a heavy drinker. Mrs. Smart remarried but this relationship ended when Leanne was eleven. This man also drank heavily & physically assaulted Mrs. Smart. The family were known to the Social Work Department at that stage & there were unproven allegations that Leanne's stepfather had physically abused her. Leanne left school with few qualifications. She had various jobs in shops but decided to look after Scott full-time.

She has no contact with Scott's father. From the age of fourteen, Leanne drank heavily most weekends with a group of school friends. In her late teens she continued to binge drink but also to use various drugs [cannabis, ecstasy, amphetamines]. She had her own tenancy but felt she could not cope with the isolation & moved back in with her mother about three months ago. Leanne is rather gaunt & becomes more agitated as the interview goes on. She says she is worried about her health, would like to be a good mother to Scott & to go back to work.

She has never received help for her drug use. Mrs. Smart says that Scott can be quite aggressive & has tantrums. She says that two days ago she came back from work to find Scott alone in the house. Mrs. Smart says she is 'worried sick' but does not know what to do. In this assignment I had been give. In this assignment I had been given the task to choose a client Leanne for her treatment and a drug cure, or addiction of drugs, which may be misused by Leanne. Then review the available evidence relating to prevalence and critically analyse the treatment options available along with their theoretical underpinnings, and finally debate the issues from a harm reduction standpoint.

Thus, I have chosen ' Leanne' as my client group and 'Alcohol' as the drug which may be misused by that group.So, broadly speaking, what is 'alcohol abuse' And what is 'alcoholism' There is a slight dissimilarity among the two terminologies. A quite fresh publication provided by Athealth.com, a leading supplier of mental health information, defines 'alcohol abuse' as 'a prototype of drinking in which a person uses alcohol in a way that is damaging to themselves or others.'Alcoholism or alcohol reliance is further seen as a disease.

The World Health Organisation's meaning of 'Alcoholism' (1952) read in part:'Alcoholics are those extreme drinkers where reliance on alcohol has accomplished such a degree that it shows a obvious mental trouble or an meddling with their bodily and mental health.'Likewise, Keller's definition (1960) in Faugier and Kennedy (1989 p.56) also refers to the disease model:'Alcoholism is a chronic disease manifested by repeated implicative drinking so as to cause injury to the drinker's health or to his social or economic functioning.

'The weaknesses of such definitions are that they avoid the exact explanation of the word and concentrate on the effects of the condition. The most common features of alcoholism are described by Gossop (2000 p.78) as: (i) an increased physiological tolerance to alcohol; (ii) withdrawal symptoms and craving when alcohol is not