Alcohol problem recognition and help seeking in adolescents and young adults at varying genetic and environmental risk

Introduction: Alcohol use disorder symptoms frequently occur in adolescents and younger adults who seldom acknowledge a need for help. We identified sociodemographic, clinical, and familial predictors of alcohol problem recognition and help seeking in an offspring of twin sample. Method: We analyzed longitudinal data from the Children of Alcoholics and Twins as Parents studies, which are combinable longitudinal data sources due to their equivalent design. We analyzed respondents (n= 1073, 56.0% of the total sample) with alcohol use disorder symptoms at the baseline interview. Familial characteristics included perceptions of alcohol problems and help seeking for alcohol problems within the immediate family and a categorical variable indicating genetic and environmental risk. We used logistic regression to examine predictors of alcohol problem recognition and help seeking. Results: Approximately 25.9% recognized their alcohol problems and 26.7% sought help for drinking. In covariate-adjusted analyses, help seeking among family members predicted problem recognition, several clinical characteristics predicted both problem recognition and help seeking, and familial risk predicted help seeking. Alcohol problem recognition mediated the association between alcohol use disorder symptoms and incident help seeking. Conclusions: Facilitating the self-recognition of alcohol use disorder symptoms, and perhaps the awareness of family members' help seeking for alcohol problems, may be potentially promising methods to facilitate help seeking.