NARCOTIC ADDICTION AMONG PHYSICIANS: A TEN-YEAR FOLLOW-UP
PETER L. PUTNAM M.D.1, and
EVERETT H. ELLINWOOD JR. M.D.2
1 Mental Health Career Development Program of the National Institute of Mental Health, assigned to the Training and Manpower Resources Branch, NIMH
2 Department of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N. C.
Physicians represented approximately two percent of the total male discharges from the USPHS Hospital in Lexington, Ky., in 1952. Most were over 40 years old. About 50 percent had only one admission to the hospital, while the remainder had from two to eight admissions from 1940 to 1962. Morphine and meperidine were the most commonly used drugs; many used barbiturates and alcohol in addition to the narcotic. There was no correlation between type of drug used and psychiatric diagnosis. Many had organic disease of varying severity. Most were married, Protestant and came from one of the southern states.
When compared with a control group in 1950, there were no significant differences in AMA membership, specialty or type of practice Members of the patient group did move from one city to another twice as frequently as the controls. There was a more rapid attrition rate of the patient group from the AMA directories, and after ten years only 57 percent remained listed, while 81 percent of those in the control group were still listed. While this difference is significant(at p.<.01), it is also noteworthy that 57 percent of the patient group were still listed in the directory.
