[en] A theoretical approach, based on the generalized ballooning-mode formalism, has been developed to analyze the continuum damping of discrete toroidal Alfven eigenmodes (TAE) in finite-β tokamak plasmas. Specific damping rates have been calculated for the (s, α) model equilibrium. In particular, it is found that there exists critical α values, α_c, such that, as α → α_c, TAE would be stabilized due to enhanced continuum damping. On the other hand, the authors have also examined instability driving mechanisms including finite orbit effects of the energetic particles. Generic open-quotes fishbone-likeclose quotes dispersion relations have been derived for both the kinetic ballooning modes (KBM) and TAE. They note the existence of the energetic-particle branch. For the low-frequency KBM, the energetic-particle branch typically dominates the MHD branch. Implications to TAE are also discussed