title: Comorbid psychiatric disorders predict and influence treatment outcome in female alcoholics.
abstract: Drinking patterns, psychiatric comorbidity and personality disorders (PD) at intake and at a 2-year follow-up were studied in 120 female alcoholics early in their treatment career. At follow-up, the women had improved their drinking patterns, but their mental health still differed significantly from women of the general population. Psychiatric comorbidity at intake correlated with a significantly worse drinking and mental health outcome. Subjects with high scores on phobias more frequently dropped out of treatment and thereby had a worse drinking outcome. Subjects with depression at follow-up also had a poorer drinking outcome, as well as subjects with schizoid PD. When tested by multivariate analyses, only depression at follow-up contributed significantly to the increased explained variance in drinking outcome when controlling for drinking pattern and treatment duration.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. brit.haver@psyk.uib.no
authors.forename: Brit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Haver
mesh_terms: D000437:Alcoholism / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015897:Comorbidity; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009664:Norway / Q000453:epidemiology; D016896:Treatment Outcome