Am J Psychiatry 1990; 147:1542-1546
Copyright © 1990 by American Psychiatric Association
Cocaine/"crack" dependence among psychiatric inpatients
G Bunt, M Galanter, H Lifshutz and R Castaneda
Department of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, NY 10016.
The authors studied 40 cocaine-dependent subjects admitted to psychiatric
inpatient wards of a metropolitan hospital because of general psychiatric
symptoms. The results indicate that the predominant form of cocaine
administration (88%) was freebasing "crack." DSM-III-R cluster B
personality disorders (N = 17) and schizophrenia (N = 13) constituted the
diagnoses for 75% of the sample. Compared to the schizophrenic patients in
this cohort, the patients with cluster B personality disorders used cocaine
in greater quantities and more frequently and began abuse of the drug at an
earlier age. The escalation in urban areas of psychiatric hospitalizations
attributed to use of crack may be largely related to psychiatric symptoms
in cocaine- dependent patients with personality disorders as well as
cocaine- induced psychopathology in schizophrenic patients.
