Witnessing Public Drinking and its Relevance to Discrimination Against Individuals Living With Alcohol Use Disorders

Abstract

Objective: The primary goal of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between how often a person perceives public drinking in their neighbourhood and if they discriminate against individuals living with alcohol use disorders. The second study goal was to identify if the prevalence of heavy episodic drinking among drinkers in a country modified this relationship. Methods: Our secondary analysis used publicly available data from the World Value Survey Wave 6, in addition to the Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2014 provided by the World Health Organization. To investigate the relationships of interest, a two-level multivariate hierarchal logistic regression model with random intercept was created. Prevalence of heavy episodic drinking among drinkers in a country was categorized into quartiles of approximately equal size. Several sensitivity analyses were used to investigate country-specific relationships and the effects of missing data. Results: While the prevalence of heavy episodic drinking among drinkers in a country did modify the relationship, there was no dose response. All of the significant relationships were found within the relative low category of heavy episodic drinking prevalence among drinkers. Additionally, when missing data was accounted for, only one significant relationship remained. When a single level model was created to examine the relationship between perceived frequency of neighbourhood public drinking and discrimination against individuals living with alcohol use disorder within individual countries, unique relationships were found within each country. Conclusion: Although prevalence of heavy episodic drinking among drinkers appeared to be largely unrelated to the main relationship between the perceived frequency of neighbourhood public drinking and discrimination against individuals living with alcohol use disorders, it was clear that the main relationship does exist within certain countries. These results aim to inspire future studies to identify a link between direct contact, second-hand alcohol harms, and how these harmful encounters may motivate discrimination against individuals living with alcohol use disorders within specific cultural contexts.