What happens over the long-term?
What happens over the long-term course of alcoholism focuses our view on a number of issues found throughout the literature of alcoholism studies, placing them in a quite different perspective. When trying to encompass the effects of what may be a chronic condition, lasting for decades, the importance of short-term prognoses and treatment results falls back and gives centre stage to the overall pattern of events. Treatment episodes recur and become an accumulated treatment experience, a voluntary consumption pattern of treatment services. The spontaneous recoveries that take place in the community and the undiagnosed cases of alcoholism that do not reach for medical intervention take on a special significance in charting the general course. The backdrop of maturing and ageing processes interacts with a life course of events in determining the direction of the play.
Taylor
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Institute of Psychiatry, Addiction Research Unit, London, UK.
D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000401:mortality / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011379:Prognosis; D012008:Recurrence; D013695:Temperance; D013997:Time Factors