Screening and brief intervention for hazardous alcohol use within Indigenous populations: Potential solution or impossible dream?

Abstract

Despite the increasing popularity of screening and brief intervention (SBI) for hazardous drinking within the wider population, there is a paucity of SBI research directed at Indigenous populations. In Canada, Aboriginal drinkers are less than half as likely to drink on a weekly/daily basis but more than twice as likely to binge drink compared to the general drinking population. As a result, there is a high rate of alcohol related deaths and hospitalisations compared to the non-Aboriginal population. Modification of these patterns and levels of hazardous drinking – especially binge drinking – among Aboriginal drinkers should markedly improve health outcomes. Although the efficacy of SBI has been demonstrated across a range of health care settings and sociocultural groups, there are potential systemic and cultural barriers to implementation of SBI for Aboriginal hazardous drinkers including the historic impact of alcohol on Aboriginal communities. Implementation of SBI must address these barriers and be sensitive to the historic relationship between Aboriginals and alcohol.

• Alcohol
• brief intervention
• screening
• aboriginal
• indigenous
• first nations
• inuit

Notes

Notes

[1] There may have been a tendency to engage in the rapid ingestion or ‘gulp drinking’ of alcohol to avoid detection and prosecution by the authorities (First Nations Centre 2005).