Background: Alcohol use is part of many cultural, religious and social practices, and provides perceived pleasure to many users. In many societies, alcoholic beverages are a routine part of the social landscape for many in the population. Relatively low rates were reported for Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD) in a community-based survey and facility detection survey conducted in the study site contrary to findings in earlier formative studies where alcohol use was reported to be a major health problem. The aim of this study was to understand the reasons for under-reporting and the low detection rate for AUDs, exploring societal perceptions of alcohol use in the study district. Methods: The study was conducted in Kamuli District (implementation site for the PRIME project). Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with purposively selected participants that included local and religious leaders, lay people, health workers as well as heavy alcohol drinkers and their spouses. Interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The analysis followed four thematic areas, which include the extent and acceptability of alcohol use, patterns of alcohol use, perceived health problems associated with alcohol use and help-seeking behavior for persons with alcohol related problems. Results: The findings indicate that alcohol consumption in the study site was common and widely acceptable across all categories of people and only frowned upon if the person becomes a nuisance to others. These findings suggest that the health problems associated with alcohol use are overlooked except when they are life-threatening. Help-seeking for such problems was therefore reported to be relatively rare. Conclusion: Alcohol was readily available in the community and its consumption widely acceptable, with less social sanctions despite the legal restrictions to the minors. The social acceptance results in low recognition of alcohol use related health problems, consequently resulting in poor help-seeking behavior. Background Alcohol use is part of many cultural, religious and social practices, and provides perceived pleasure to many users. It is an ancient custom in many communities and has never been an illegal act (1). In

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. • ESRC Research Centre on Micro-social Change. Established in 1989 to identify, explain, model and forecast social change in Britain at the individual and household level, the Centre specialises in research using longitudinal data. Terms of use: Documents in• ESRC UK Longitudinal Centre. This national resource centre was established in October 1999 to promote the use of longitudinal data and to develop a strategy for the future of large-scale longitudinal surveys. It was responsible for the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and for the ESRC's interest in the National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study• European Centre for Analysis in the Social Sciences. ECASS is an interdisciplinary research centre which hosts major research programmes and helps researchers from the EU gain access to longitudinal data and cross-national datasets from all over Europe.The British Household Panel Survey is one of the main instruments for measuring social change in Britain. The BHPS comprises a nationally representative sample of around 5,500 households and over 10,000 individuals who are reinterviewed each year. The questionnaire includes a constant core of items accompanied by a variable component in order to provide for the collection of initial conditions data and to allow for the subsequent inclusion of emerging research and policy concerns.Among the main projects in ISER's research programme are: the labour market and the division of domestic responsibilities; changes in families and households; modelling households' labour force behaviour; wealth, well-being and socio-economic structure; resource distribution in the household; and modelling techniques and survey methodology.BHPS data provide the academic community, policymakers and private sector with a unique national resource and allow for comparative research with similar studies in Europe, the United States and Canada.BHPS data are available from the Data Archive at the University of Essex http://www.data-archive.ac.ukFurther information about the BHPS and other longitudinal surveys can be obtained by telephoning +44 (0) 1206 873543.

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Idealised notions of personal relationships, for example about the 'proper' way to be a family or to be a friend, develop within particular cultures and contexts. In practice, however, these 'models-in-themind' may not correspond with the way people actually live. A mismatch between the 'ideal' and 'real' can trigger a range of different reactions. For example, 'non-traditional' families may be criticised as essentially deviant and deficient in some way (the deficit response). Alternatively, they may be heralded as 'families of choice', and championed as a way of escaping out-of-date and oppressive models (the liberation response). Finally, the notion of the family may be recast so that those who play a family-like role in people's lives, who behave like family, or are treated as family, should be defined as family (the functional response). Each response implicitly suggests that there is some kind of taken-for-granted model that has to be compensated for, rebelled against or redefined. Terms of use: Documents inRather than bemoaning or extolling perceived departures from an ideal, the paper urges an examination of the nature and content of informal social relationships, and the ways in which peoplegive and receive companionship, intimacy and support -whether this is with family members, or friends, or other significant ties. This approach makes it possible to reveal cases where a blurring of boundaries is taking place, with family members playing more friend-like roles and friends taking on more family-like functions, a process the authors call fusion. We suggest the idea of a personal community -the micro-social world of significant others for any given individual -as a practical schema for capturing the set of relationships in which people are actually embedded. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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