Abstract
The nature of substance-related disorder (SRD) inpatients with comorbid anxiety disorder (AD) is not well understood. Sucb patients may be “self-medicating,” in which case we would expect greater abuse of antianxiety or sedating substances. To address these issues, the authors compared 36 patients with comorbid SRD-AD with 308 SRD-only patients. Relatively more women were in the SRD-AD group, but other demographic characteristics did not differ between the two groups. Several childhood variables (related to problematic behavior and academic problems) did distinguish the two groups. Unexpectedly, the SRD-AD patients met fewer diagnostic criteria for cannabis and opiate diagnoses (P < 0.01). Family history revealed less maternal SRD in the SRD-AD group. Numerous indices of course and severity failed to reveal many differences between the two groups. These data suggest that SRD type and severity among comorbid SRD-AD patients closely resembles those among SRD-only patients. These data have implications for the assessment and care of comorbid SRD-AD patients.