Reaching out to their fellow colleagues, the rural police in the district have begun a program to rehabilitate alcoholics among their force.
The identified alcoholics are being inspired to join several de-addiction programmes, therapy sessions and anti-alcoholism counselling to help them get over the problem.
Counsellors and psychiatrists, who have worked closely with the police force, say that this problem is the primarily caused by excessive stress, long and uncomfortable timings and separation from families for long periods.
The rural police, earlier this month, launched a structured programme to reach out and rehabilitate alcoholics among their staff. Officials confirmed that they took a month to identify people suffering from alcohol addiction of dependency in their force.
"We took a lot of time to identify people suffering from the problem, because it was done discreetly so as to not expose their identity among too many of their colleagues," said a senior official, who did not wish to be named.
"We then approached their families to get their consent to put their family member through this program, and once we got it, we made a list," said the official.
The department finally identified 59 alcoholics among their force, who were further divided into three categories - chronic, medium and light.
"While 19 of the identified men are chronic alcoholics, the remaining 40 fall into the medium and light category," said the official.
"We are attending to the chronic alcoholics now. While seven of them have been admitted for de-addiction treatment into private de-addiction centres in the city, the remaining 12 are being given counselling and de-addiction therapy," the official added.
Psychiatrists and counsellors dealing with alcohol de-addiction say alcoholism among policemen has been an age-old problem. "We have had a few policemen, though an extremely miniscule number, coming in for deaddiction," said the director of Kasthurba Gadhi De Addiction Research and Rehabilitation Centre, Durairaj Srinivasan. "However, a pattern exclusively for policemen is yet to be noticed," he said.
"They don't have very different reasons, besides the rest of us like availability of alcohol, drinking from an early age and genetic problems," said a member of Coimbatore District Alcoholic Anonymous.
"They don't have set timings and often work around 20 hours at a stretch, said R Godhanavalli, a police counsellors. " They also deal with a lot of pressure from seniors and even abuses from them," she said.
A proper 10-15 day de-addiction programme includes taking down the intake history, understanding their individual causes, a blood investigation to find out if they diabetes or liver problems, a physical examination, a detox program accompanied with tablets to handle alcohol withdrawal symptoms and then drugs to induce alcohol aversion.
The identified alcoholics are being inspired to join several de-addiction programmes, therapy sessions and anti-alcoholism counselling to help them get over the problem.
Counsellors and psychiatrists, who have worked closely with the police force, say that this problem is the primarily caused by excessive stress, long and uncomfortable timings and separation from families for long periods.
The rural police, earlier this month, launched a structured programme to reach out and rehabilitate alcoholics among their staff. Officials confirmed that they took a month to identify people suffering from alcohol addiction of dependency in their force.
"We took a lot of time to identify people suffering from the problem, because it was done discreetly so as to not expose their identity among too many of their colleagues," said a senior official, who did not wish to be named.
"We then approached their families to get their consent to put their family member through this program, and once we got it, we made a list," said the official.
The department finally identified 59 alcoholics among their force, who were further divided into three categories - chronic, medium and light.
"While 19 of the identified men are chronic alcoholics, the remaining 40 fall into the medium and light category," said the official.
"We are attending to the chronic alcoholics now. While seven of them have been admitted for de-addiction treatment into private de-addiction centres in the city, the remaining 12 are being given counselling and de-addiction therapy," the official added.
Psychiatrists and counsellors dealing with alcohol de-addiction say alcoholism among policemen has been an age-old problem. "We have had a few policemen, though an extremely miniscule number, coming in for deaddiction," said the director of Kasthurba Gadhi De Addiction Research and Rehabilitation Centre, Durairaj Srinivasan. "However, a pattern exclusively for policemen is yet to be noticed," he said.
"They don't have very different reasons, besides the rest of us like availability of alcohol, drinking from an early age and genetic problems," said a member of Coimbatore District Alcoholic Anonymous.
"They don't have set timings and often work around 20 hours at a stretch, said R Godhanavalli, a police counsellors. " They also deal with a lot of pressure from seniors and even abuses from them," she said.
A proper 10-15 day de-addiction programme includes taking down the intake history, understanding their individual causes, a blood investigation to find out if they diabetes or liver problems, a physical examination, a detox program accompanied with tablets to handle alcohol withdrawal symptoms and then drugs to induce alcohol aversion.