Alcohol abuse or dependence and other psychiatric disorders. Madrid study on the prevalence of dual pathology

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyse the alcohol addict subgroup from the Madrid study on the prevalence of dual pathology in community mental health and substance misuse services. The sample consisted of 837 outpatients from Madrid, Spain. We compared 528 subjects with a lifetime diagnosis of alcohol abuse or dependence and 182 with other substance use disorders (SUDs) not involving alcohol. The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) was used to evaluate Axis I disorders and the Personality Disorder Questionnaire to evaluate personality disorders. It was considered that 76.1% of the alcohol addicts had a current dual diagnosis, the most prevalent being mood and anxiety disorders. Fifty-two per cent had a personality disorder and most of them (81.6%) had other SUDs. There was a greater prevalence of dual pathology in the alcohol addict subgroup than in the subgroup without problems of alcohol abuse or dependence. Alcohol addicts were associated with diagnoses of several types of personality disorder and bipolar disorder and presented a greater suicide risk than the subgroup of other SUDs. The subgroup of alcohol using poly-substance addicts had a greater prevalence of antisocial personality disorder than the alcohol only addicts and had initiated alcohol use at an earlier age. The presence of dual pathology is very high in alcohol addicts in treatment, higher than in the subgroup of addicts who are not alcohol users, and there were similar rates found in the subgroup of alcohol, using poly-substance addicts as in the alcohol addiction only subgroup.

Keywords:

• alcohol abuse
• alcohol dependence
• dual pathology
• personality disorder
• bipolar disorder

Acknowledgements

The authors express their sincere gratitude thanks to all the researchers.