Domestic violence - Research Paper Example

Owing to its legality, alcohol is a ubiquitous in many societies around the world and many individuals engage in alcohol consumption. In North America alcohol can be found in liquor stores, neighborhood convenience stores, grocery stores as well as in your local bar. Although alcohol is prevalent and easily accessible, it remains a harmful drug with the potential to kill, ruin lives and destroy families. Accordingly, one of the most insidious aspects of alcohol is that it is so freely available that we forget that it is a harmful drug with important health ramifications as well as a many important social consequences for individuals who choose to over indulge in alcohol.

Alcohol-related fatalities remain an important concern across the globe and despite its ubiquitousness, alcohol abuse has been proven to lead to conflict and violence.2 Seeking to address the relationship between alcohol abuse and domestic violence, the following will, discuss alcoholism and provide a broad conceptual framework for our analysis. We then turn to a discussion of the dynamics of different types of alcohol-related conflicts, including the role that alcohol plays in perpetuating conflict with the family unit, with a spouse and with children Following this thorough discussion of the different dynamics and types of conflict caused by alcoholism, we turn to an in-depth discussion of the particular approaches used to deal with conflict.

In this section we will explore the use of mediation as a method to deal with alcohol-related conflict. We will discuss groups such as Alcoholic’s Anonymous (“AA”) and the role that group mediation can play in resolving conflicts which have been brought on by alcohol abuse. We then turn to an analysis of family/group counseling and a discussion of the role of intervention in combating alcohol-related conflicts. With the goal of providing a holistic analysis to a complicated – yet increasingly