Am J Psychiatry 1977; 134:546-549
Copyright © 1977 by American Psychiatric Association
Prognostic implications of various drinking patterns in psychiatric patients
BA Ritzler, JS Strauss, A Vanord and RF Kokes
The authors examined the drinking patterns of 198 first admission
nonalcoholic psychiatric patients to determine the relationship among
drinking behavior, severity of pathology, and prognosis. Heavy drinking in
the psychiatric sample was not associated with increased levels of
pathology and poor prognosis. To the contrary, among these nonalcoholic
patients the abstainers and occasional drinkers showed the most severe
pathology and poorest prognosis of all drinking groups.
