Underage drinking is common among those aged 12 to 25 and can have negative impacts on physical and mental health as well as education and family life. Warning signs of underage drinking include behavioral or academic problems, changes in friends, and signs of intoxication. Risk factors include genetics, mental health issues, and social influences. Underage drinking is linked to car accidents, assaults, unsafe sex, and alcohol poisoning. Prevention strategies target schools, families, and policies to reduce availability and promote awareness of risks.

1. Youth Alcoholism
Ages: 12 to 25
By Danielle Herry

2. Introduction:
• Underage drinking is when anyone under the minimum legal drinking age of
18 years of age drinks alcohol.
• Underage drinking is a risk that attracts many developing adolescents and
teens.
• When young people try alcohol, they often don’t realize the damaging effects
drinking can have on their own lives, their families, bystanders and the
broader community.

3. Recognizing the signs of
underage drinking:
The warning signs are:
Academic and/or behavioral
problems in school
Changing groups of friends
Less interest in activities and/or
appearance
Finding alcohol among a young
person’s things or smelling alcohol
on their breath
Slurred speech
Coordination problems
Memory and/or concentration
problems

4. •Race and ethnicity. Some racial groups, such as Islanders, Indigenous
and also anyone from any ethnicity or culture; for example, are more at risk
than others of developing alcohol addiction.
•Genetics. A teen with an alcoholic sibling or parent is four times more likely
to develop a problem with alcohol than someone without such a family
history.
•The presence of mental health disorders. Alcohol problems often go
hand in hand with mental health problems such as depression, bipolar
disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia.
•Personality traits. Teenagers who believe alcohol makes it easier to
socialize, for example, tend to drink more than those who don’t believe that
alcohol loosens their social inhibitions.
•Influence of family and peers. Teens are at greater risk for developing
alcohol-related problems when alcohol is readily available at home or among
their peer group, and drunkenness is acceptable.
•Gender. Men are more likely to drink heavily than women, but women
become addicted at lower levels and shorter duration of use.
•Drinking may have lasting health effects. Some researchers believe that
heavy drinking at this age, when the brain is still developing, may cause
lasting impairments in brain functions such as memory, coordination, and
motor skills—at least among susceptible individuals.
•Drinking can lead to sexual assaults and rape. Each year, approximately
97,000 students between the ages of 17and up to 25 are victims of alcohol-
related sexual assault or date rape.
•Teenage girls who drink are more likely to have unprotected sex, than girls
who don’t drink, putting them at increased risk of pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases
Barriers:

5. Impacts: Aged: 12 to 25 years
While teens as young as age 12 admit to this practice, it becomes more
popular in mid-adolescence and peaks in the high schools or collage
years. Students between the ages of 18 and 25 are more likely to report
binge drinking than non-students of the same age. Recent news reports
of deaths from alcohol poisoning on college campuses have spotlighted
the dangers of binge drinking.
Binge drinkers are eight times more likely than other college students to:
 Miss classes
 Absent from work
 Fall behind in schoolwork
 Be injured
 Damage property
 Underage and binge drinking is risky and can lead to car accidents,
violent behaviours, alcohol poisoning, and other health problems.

6. Statistics:

7. The effect to the human body and mind:
The effect to the human body( biological responses) will be determine by factors
such as:
 Examples: Body mass/size,
: Gender/ age
: Experience of drinking
: Nutrition and individual metabolism
Also high consumption of alcohol will lead to
• Examples: Drowsiness/ loss of balance
: Nausea/ vomiting
: Aggression/ increased coercion in females
: Homelessness/ unemployment due to absent from work
: Crime and assaults

8. Alcoholism is also known as a family
disease:-
•Alcoholics may be young children, teenage, or
grown-up children and they have brothers or sisters;
they have parents or other relatives.
•An alcoholic can totally disrupt family life and cause
harmful effects that can last a lifetime. Each member
of the family may be affected by alcohol differently.
•Adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) are four
times more likely than children of non-alcoholics to
develop alcoholism.
Parents drinking behavior and favorable attitudes
about drinking have been positively associated with
adolescents' initiating and continuing drinking
While alcoholism treatment programs such as
Alcoholics Anonymous help people with alcohol
dependence to stop drinking and improve their life
styles, family and marital therapy and various self-
help groups help alcoholic families to improve their
own well-being.
The Family Institution
•Families of alcoholics need treatment
just as much as alcoholics. Marriage
and family counselors can help with
the tensions created in the alcoholic’s
home between partners to their
children.
•Alcohol affects each member of the
family – from the unborn child to the
alcoholic’s spouse. Its far-reaching
affects result in not only physical
problems for the alcoholics, but also
may result in physical and
psychological problems for other
members of the family and children
who are dependent are reported to
have highest rates of physical abuse,
sexual abuse, violent victimization.
•

9. The Impacts of Alcohol on the Education system
•How does problem drinking affect young
people's schooling? Drinking can affect
the biological development of young
people as well as their school-related
achievement and behavior.
•Alcohol use has significant neurological
consequences on our young
generations. Alcohol damages areas of
the brain responsible for learning and
memory, verbal skills and on their
cognitive abilities.
•The 2000 National Household Survey
on Drug Abuse (NHSDA - now known as
the National Survey on Drug Use and
Health), a federal study, found that as
rates of alcohol use by 12- to 17-year-
olds increase, grade point averages
decrease.
•In the community there are measures to
prevent adolescent from drinking alcohol
use an this also includes policy
interventions and educational programs
that have been put in place at schools to
prevent under aged drinking.
• The local police, AOD workers and
hospital staff are working with schools to
develop a better relationship between
these services and students to address
alcohol behaviors in the community.
•Activities were incorporated into some
schools by these services like AOD
workers, emergency department
nurses, police, youth liaison officers,
and young people who had physical or
mental illness resulting from excessive
alcohol consumption.
• The effect it has on these children
are means that they will be absent
from school, loss of brain functions
which then becomes a mental illness,
alcohol-related behaviour, depression,
self-harm and suicide.
• So by re-educating these 12 to 16
year olds and introducing them
back into society will reduce
unemployment and they will get
better jobs, it will help them to form
better relationships with family and
friends, there will be less stress on
the court system.
• By helping this age group to
understand how to get better
accommodation in the future and
how they themselves will be better
role models for the future
generations.

10. Children from 12 to 14 years don’t get
unemployment benefits but their parents
receive their payments. So when these
children disassociate themselves from their
family they are forced to prostitute themselves
to get money, so they can buy the necessities
that are needed for daily living.
So these young kids face having:
•No family
• No Supports
•Safety issues
•Housing issues
•Starvation
These young children who live on the streets
aged 15 to 25 years old, do get centrelink
payments but these teens/youths go and
spend their money on alcohol and other
drugs.
There are many services to support the
young person,
contact via web or call for help:
Kids Helpline - call 1800 55 1800.
Youth Beyond Blue1300 224636
www.beyondblue.org.au
Reach Out.com
Headspace : 1800 650 980
www.eheadspace.org.au
The Butterfly Foundation
1430 Malvern Road Glen Iris VIC 3146
Lifeline - call 13 11 14
Addiction can be a complex disease, or
disorder - a vicious cycle that can be very
difficult to break without the right support.
 Mission Australia : Work with people
across all areas of personal
development, with the goal of breaking
the addiction and living a happy, healthy
life without problematic alcohol and drug
use.
While not everyone who drinks alcohol
has an addiction, people who misuse
these can experience devastating
impacts on their physical, emotional and
mental health.
The reason young children develop
addiction because they are dealing with
issues like grief and loss, experiences of
violence and trauma, sexual abuse, or
mental health issues.
In reality, drug and alcohol addiction is
a complex disease because it changes
the brain in ways that makes stopping
very difficult, even for people who really
want to stop and alcohol addiction
remains one of the most pressing health
and social issues facing young
Australians..
Mental illness will affect a person’s
psychological, physical, emotional and
spiritual wellbeing, there will also be
alcohol-related behaviour, depression,
self-harm and suicide.. The impact of
mental illness on people’s ability to
function varies for every individual.
Health System

11. Strategies to Prevent Underage Drinking
School Strategies:
 Based on behavioral theory and knowledge of risk and
protective factors
 Developmentally appropriate information about
alcohol and other drugs
 Development of personal, social, and resistance skills
 Emphasis on normative education
 Multiple sessions over multiple years
 Teacher training and support
 Active family and community involvement
 Cultural sensitivity
 Extracurricular Strategies
 Supervision by positive adult role models
 Youth leadership
 Intensive programs
 Incorporation of skills building
 Part of a comprehensive prevention plan
 Family Strategies
 Improvement of parent-child relations using positive
reinforcement, listening and communication skills,
and problem solving
 Provision of consistent discipline and rulemaking
 Monitoring of children’s activities during adolescence
 Strengthening of family bonding
 Involvement of child and parents
 Minimum legal drinking age of 21
 Citizen action to reduce commercial and social
availability of alcohol
 Underage drinking presents an enormous public health
issue. Alcohol is the drug of choice among children and
adolescents.
 Annually, about 5,000 youth under age 18 die from motor
vehicle crashes, other unintentional injuries, and
homicides and suicides that involve underage drinking.
 As the lead Federal agency for supporting and conducting
basic and applied research on alcohol problems, NIAAA
is spearheading an Initiative on Underage Drinking to
intensify research, evaluation, and outreach efforts in this
important area.
 This special Highlight section of the Alcohol Policy
Information System(APIS Web site) provides convenient
access to APIS policy topics that pertain to underage
drinking.
 Federal Law for Prohibitions Against Hosting
Underage Drinking Parties
These laws often are closely linked to laws prohibiting
furnishing alcohol to minors, although laws establishing
State-imposed liability for hosting underage drinking
parties may apply without regard to who furnishes the
alcohol. Hosts who allow underage drinking on their
property as well as supply the alcohol consumed or
possessed by the minors may be in violation of two
distinct laws: furnishing alcohol to a minor and allowing
underage drinking to occur on property they control.
 It is now against the law in Victoria to serve alcohol in a
private home to anyone under 18, unless their parent or
guardian has given permission.

12. • Alcohol Education - lifeeducation.org.au
• www.helpguide.org/harvard/the-dangers-of-teenage-drinking.htm
• https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/special-populations.../underage-drinking
• http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/topics/quick-statistics#sthash.dncahN4G.dpuf
• www.teendrinkinglaw.vic.gov.au/
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's (NIAAA's) World Wide Web site at http://www.niaaa.nih.gov.
• www.kidshelp.com.au (24/7 crisis support)
• www.eheadspace.org.au
• www.beyondblue.org.au
Thank you for attending.