[Symposium 40] Strategies for Ethnocultural Research in Siberia and the Far East

[SY-40-01] The problem of female alcoholism in ethnic populations of Siberia

*Nikolay Alexandrovich Bokhan^1,2, Natalia I. Kisel¹, Anna I. Mandel¹, U. K. Biche-Ool³, Alexander V. Didenko^1,2 (1.Mental Health Research Institute of Tomsk NRMC(Russia), 2.Siberian State Medical University(Russia), 3.Republican Addictological Dispensary(Russia))

Keywords:

Tuva,women,alcoholism,Russian female patients

Background. The prevalence and structure of alcohol abuse and its negative consequences in different ethnocultural groups vary depending on the ethnic composition of the population, socio-psychological factors, and cultural features. Objective: to analyze the prevalence and formation of alcohol dependence in women of Tuvan and Russian ethnicity. Material and Methods. Clinical-psychopathological, clinical-catamnestic, and mathematical-statistical methods were used. Alcohol dependence was diagnosed according to ICD-10. The study sample included two groups of women suffering from alcoholism. Group 1 - 78 female patients from the Republican Narcological Dispensary of the Republic of Tyva. Group 2 included 66 female patients from the Addictive States Department of the Mental Health Research Institute of Tomsk National Research Medical Center. Results. According to official statistics of the Republic of Tuva, there has been an annual increase in the number of women under dispensary care. The development of the main symptoms of alcohol dependence in group 1 was accelerated. Alcohol psychoses among the women of group 1 were statistically significantly more common (p<0.05) than in women of group 2: 38.6% versus 6.0%. The development of psychotic alcoholism in group 1 occurred at a younger age than in group 2: on average 39.9±9.5 years versus 49.1±4.2 years. In group 1, women had a higher frequency of relapses of alcoholic psychosis (from 2 to 9 in each case) compared to women of group 2: 16.7% versus 1.2%. Conclusion. It was revealed that in women of Tuvan ethnicity, the development of alcohol dependence was characterized by a higher progression: more frequent severe forms of alcoholic amnesia, low alcohol tolerance, a high prevalence of alcoholic psychoses, relapsing in 16.7% of women, negative social consequences of alcohol abuse in the form of deprivation of parental rights in a third of Tuvan women (32%), which generally indicated the malignant course of alcohol dependence in women of Tuvan ethnicity.