Drugs and Aggression Readily Mix; So What Now?

Abstract

Intoxicated aggression is both a dangerous and a costly problem for society, with alcohol being involved in over 50% of violent crimes, and the cost of alcohol-consumption-related crime being estimated at $205 billion in the United States alone. First, the authors reviewed the substantial evidence for the connection between alcohol consumption and aggression, and then they examined the risk factors for this problem. These included societal/cultural factors, such as availability and alcohol expectancies, and individual factors, such as demographic characteristics, personality, comorbid disorders, individual differences in response to alcohol, and cognitive functioning. Finally, interventions were suggested focusing on policy, alcohol sellers, treatments for alcohol abuse and dependency, anger management, pharmacology, and low executive functioning. Further efforts are still needed to target interventions to specific risk factors.

Keywords:

• alcohol
• aggression
• risk factors
• interventions
• literature review

Notes

¹The reader is reminded that this concept, often noted in the literature, is all-too-often inadequately delineated in terms of its dimensions (linear, nonlinear), its “demands,” the critical necessary conditions (endogenous as well as exogenous ones, both micro and macro) which are necessary for it to operate (begin, continue, become anchored and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to and whether its underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically based, individual and/or systemic stakeholder-bound, based upon “principles of faith,” etc. Such understanding is necessary if the term is not to remain as yet another shibboleth in a field of many stereotypes. Hills's criteria for causation are a useful consideration. These were developed in order to help assist researchers and clinicians determine if risk factors were causes of a particular disease or outcomes or merely associated (Hill, 1965). Editor's note.

²There is the need to distinguish between pharmacological action and one's “drug experience,” which is the outcome of the complex interactions between the chemically active substance and the user, and where it is being used, or site (Zinberg, 1984). Editor's note.

³The journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.