The prevalence of alcoholism in Northern Ireland.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH There is very little information at present available about the prevalence or general epidemiology of alcoholism in Northern Ireland. Traditionally, the Irish have been considered to be excessive consumers of alcoholic drinks. For example, in 1810 the "Belfast Monthly Magazine" felt compelled to complain that, "The cheapness of the poison of ardent spirits is permitted to increase our national vice, and that fondness for intoxication which is unhappily characteristic of our country." The belief that "drunkenness" is characteristic of any one country or that it is an innate weakness of the inhabitants cannot be supported by historical evidence. For example, Trevelyan writes of England in the days of Queen Anne, "Drunkenness was the acknowledged national vice of Englishmen of all classes, though women were not accused of it" (Trevelyan, 1944). It was not until recently that the medical syndrome of alcoholism was differentiated from the more diffuse concept of drunkenness. This makes historical commentaries of even less value in assessing the extent of pathological drinking. Even today, there is very little reliable information about alcoholism either in Northern Ireland or in the Republic of Ireland. Most of the documented evidence about alcoholism in the Irish has been based on immigrants in the United States. The findings have been of great interest and the workers have made much of Irish attitudes and drinking patterns to support socio-cultural theories of the aetiology of alcoholism (Bales, 1946; Myerson, 1952; McCord et al., 1959; Mulford and Miller, 1960; Viney, 1964). It is unfortunate, however, that the high prevalence of alcoholism in Irish immigrants in the United States, and a lack of distinction between heavy social drinking and alcoholism, has lead to the assumption that there is a high prevalence of alcoholism among the Irish living in Ireland. An example of this confusion is illustrated in a recent epidemiological review (Rathod, 1964). Some assessments of the alcoholic problem in Northern Ireland have been made, and within the last few years Grant and Boyd surveyed a small sample of Ulster general practitioners to estimate the number of alcoholics in their practices (Grant and Boyd, 1961 and 1962). For reasons given later the figure obtained (191 alcoholics per 100,000 adults) is probably a gross underestimate. There have been appeals for further research (Grant and Boyd, 1961; Grant,