Female alcohol consumption, motivations for aggression and aggressive incidents in licensed premises

Aggressive behaviour among drug-using women from Cape Town, South Africa: ethnicity, heavy alcohol use, methamphetamine and intimate partner violence

Background

Women have generally been found to be the victims of violence, but scant attention has been paid to the characteristics of women who perpetrate aggression and violence. In South Africa, violence is a prevalent societal issue, especially in the Western Cape.

Method

This study aimed at identifying factors that were associated with aggression among a sample of 720 substance-using women. We conducted multivariate logistic regression to identify factors that are significantly associated with these behaviours.

Results

Ethnicity (Wald Χ² = 17.07(2), p < 0.01) and heavy drinking (Wald Χ² = 6.60 (2), p = 0.01) were significantly related to verbal aggression, methamphetamine use was significantly related to physical (Wald Χ² = 2.73 (2), p = 0.01) and weapon aggression (Wald Χ² = 7.94 (2), p < 0.01) and intimate partner violence was significantly related to verbal (Wald Χ² = 12.43 (2), p < 0.01) and physical aggression (Wald Χ² = 25.92 (2), p < 0.01).

Conclusions

The findings show high levels of aggression among this sample, and highlight the need for interventions that address methamphetamine, heavy drinking and intimate partner violence among vulnerable substance-using women.

Effects of acute alcohol consumption and processing of emotion in faces: Implications for understanding alcohol-related aggression

The negative consequences of chronic alcohol abuse are well known, but heavy episodic consumption ("binge drinking") is also associated with significant personal and societal harms. Aggressive tendencies are increased after alcohol but the mechanisms underlying these changes are not fully understood. While effects on behavioural control are likely to be important, other effects may be involved given the widespread action of alcohol. Altered processing of social signals is associated with changes in social behaviours, including aggression, but until recently there has been little research investigating the effects of acute alcohol consumption on these outcomes. Recent work investigating the effects of acute alcohol on emotional face processing has suggested reduced sensitivity to submissive signals (sad faces) and increased perceptual bias towards provocative signals (angry faces) after alcohol consumption, which may play a role in alcohol-related aggression. Here we discuss a putative mechanism that may explain how alcohol consumption influences emotional processing and subsequent aggressive responding, via disruption of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)-amygdala connectivity. While the importance of emotional processing on social behaviours is well established, research into acute alcohol consumption and emotional processing is still in its infancy. Further research is needed and we outline a research agenda to address gaps in the literature.