Academics address alcoholism in Aboriginal tribes

Alcoholism among Aborigines should be treated as a social, rather than medical, problem with an emphasis on keeping people off alcohol once they have completed rehabilitation, academics said yesterday.

Associate professor Wang Tseng-yung (王增勇) said that the incidence of alcoholism in the nation's Aboriginal population was a reflection of the pressures their cultures were being put under by the dominant Han culture.

He said it was Aboriginal teachers and civil servants, who had most interaction with other cultures and were bestowed with the greatest expectations of their tribes, who were most likely to resort to drinking to relieve the stress.

"Are the Han people ready to help the Aborigines to deal with the pain caused by these social issues without resorting to alcoholism?" Wang asked.

Wang spoke during a World Vision Taiwan seminar on how to reduce alcoholism in Aboriginal settlements.

World Vision Taiwan has been working on the issue for more than 10 years, and the organization said that they hoped the seminar would provide social and medical workers involved in the project with better methods to deal with the problem.

"Alcoholism among the Aboriginal settlements is a problem that should be investigated from different aspects -- physical, psychological and social," said Hank Du (杜明翰), director of World Vision Taiwan.

"Often a minority group will face this problem partly because of fast social and cultural changes," Du said.

Du said it would require a coordinated approach that included the medical and social welfare systems to address the problem.

"It is important to be able to solve the problem and continue the work at the settlements instead of having to haul the Aboriginal alcoholics to hospitals on the plains. Most important of all, how to maintain their sobriety after they are rehabilitated is actually the major task in the project," Du said.

Du said that it was also important for society not to equate aborigines with alcoholism.

Cheng Tai-an (鄭泰安), a Academia Sinica researcher who has been studying about Aboriginal culture for more than 16 years, pointed out that to cure Aborigines of alcoholism, the government and social groups needed to assign Aboriginal social and medical workers who know the culture instead of Han ones who are not really interested in Aboriginal issues.

Cheng said that it was important that rehabilitation should be carried out at centers instead of at touring medical facilities, since alcoholics would need continuous treatment.

He said that since drinking was a collective activity in the settlements, if the government really wanted to end alcoholism in the settlements, the workers should seek to treat all alcoholics in the settlements together at one time. Otherwise, he said, when a person returns to the settlement after being treated, his neighbor was very likely to invite him over for a drink.

"Getting rid of alcoholism is easy -- the treatment only takes about one to two weeks. Maintaining sobriety afterwards is the difficult part," Cheng said.