Alcoholism.  It’s a hard illness to have and a hard topic to talk about.

Alcoholism is a chronic illness that occurs when your body becomes dependent on alcohol.  You are unable to control your urges to drink despite the fact that your actions might be negatively affecting yourself and others.

There are those whose excessive drinking causes problems to their health and their social life but they have not lost control over their behavior.  This is called “alcohol abuse”.

Alcohol addiction and abuse is treatable through medications, self-help groups, and counseling among other therapies.

Many alcoholics deny they have a problem.  The following is a list of some signs to look for for both alcoholism and alcohol abuse.

• Do you keeping alcohol in secret places like the car or at work?
• Is your drinking negatively effecting your workplace productivity, relationships and finances?
• Are you “blacking out”.  Not remembering commitments or people you’ve spoken with?
• Are you losing interest in things you used to enjoy?
• Are you drinking by yourself?
• If you have no alcohol do you experience physical withdrawals like shaking and sweating?

If you are not sure whether you have a problem ask yourself these four questions.

• Do you drink alcohol first thing in the morning?
• Do you get frustrated when others comment on your drinking practices?
• Do you have a bad conscience about your drinking?
• Do you think that you’re drinking too much?

A yes answer to two, or maybe even one, of those questions above indicates that you likely have a problem.

Addiction to alcohol happens slowly.  By drinking excessively, over time, chemicals in the body change so that the body craves alcohol to make it feel better again.

There are a variety of causes that can make one more susceptible to problems with alcohol.  These include genetics and emotional well being.  For instance, concerning emotional well being, problems can include office stress, anxiety sometimes accompanied with anxiety attack symptoms, different types of depression and stress.  Plus if you are around others who drink and help create an atmosphere of tolerance then it could be harder for you to decrease your drinking.

There are several risk factors.  These include history in the family of this illness, sex (women are less likely then men to become addicted), your genes, if you started drinking by age 16 (you are more likely to have a more severe problem if you start drinking by age 16 or earlier).  And if you have mental disorders including depression, anxiety or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.  In fact, those with mental illness may create their own depression treatment or ways to overcome anxiety by trying to drink away their painful feelings.

There is not an alcohol test to diagnose whether you are an alcoholic.  In order to find out if you have an alcohol problem you will need to have at least a few of the symptoms as listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

If you are having adverse side effects from alcohol but are not dependent then the goal of treatment is to decrease problems related to alcohol.  These can include psychological therapy or brief intervention, possibly from an alcohol-abuse specialist who may come up with a treatment plan.  Other interventions can include behavior modification techniques, goal setting and self-help manuals.  If you have alcoholism then treatment at a rehab center and alcohol detox might be necessary, plus you will need to stop drinking alcohol permanently in order to have increasing productivity.  But there are medications and other methods to help you along the way.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are studying abnormalities in eye movement that may help diagnose mental illness.

How the eyes track a moving object can indicate problems with the neural circuitry of the brain and appears to correspond to some mental disorders.  For example, those who are schizophrenic have trouble keeping their eyes focused on objects that are slow-moving.

John Sweeney, director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine in UIC’s department of psychiatry, and his  colleagues are spearheading a research study that is being funded by a $1.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.  They are studying and cataloging eye movement patterns in patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, autism and schizophrenia in order to begin to validate eye movement problems as indicators for a variety of brain diseases.  New technologies allow researchers to precisely measure these abnormalities compared to normal patterns.

“Psychiatric illnesses are not well understood neurologically”, said Sweeney.  The goal of Sweeney and his colleagues is to develop eye movement tests for diagnosing brain disorders.  Tests for many of these illnesses don’t exist today.  For instance there is no scientific bipolar test.  However the field is still in its infancy.

During a child’s development, between ages 8 to 15, the brain undergoes significant changes that affect eye movement control.  Sweeney and his team have been studying eye movement patterns in this age group for 20 years and have been documenting the course of brain and cognitive development during this period.

A variety of tasks test the function of various parts of the brain that control cognitive function and, not necessarily vision, but eye movements.

“Eye movement studies provide a noninvasive way to gain a deeper understanding of the brain dysfunctions at the root of psychiatric illnesses”, said Sweeney.  “We are following patients over time to monitor the progression of their disease and determine whether different treatments are improving their brain and cognitive function.”

Hopefully treatment will be created so that those with mental illness are able to have increasing productivity.

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