Abstract:
The study describes the 10-year follow-up of 215 alcohol patients after a treatment in the hospital for psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University of Tübingen.
10 years after the treatment, 66% of the patients were alive and 13% had died. For the remaining 21% of patients we found no information as to whether they were alive or not. 59% of the patients had relapsed at least once, 23% had been abstinent during the whole 10 year follow-up period, in 18% we did not get information about their drinking habits. 43% of all patients (N=93) participated in a detailed interview. Those patients were representative of the whole group in so far as that their baseline characteristics did not differ from those who did not participate in the detailed follow-up interview. About 13.5% of all patients no information was available.
During the follow-up, the situation of the 93 patients which we could examine had become better: 43% had been abstinent during the follow-up, and 63% had consumed no alcohol in the year preceding the interview. Because many patients had only had short relapses we added up the times of abstinence. More than 75% of the patients had had a total drinking period of less than 1 month.
Concerning mortality, most of the predictors we found were parameters related to alcohol or depression. For the drinking outcome the most important predictor was the estimation of the physician, but also parameters related to alcohol, the patient´s motivation and psychiatric disturbance.
Regarding the long-term course, those patients who had hard relapses had more deficits in medical and social areas than those patients whose alcohol conumption had been minimal or nil. The patients with comorbid psychiatric illnesses hardly differed from the others.
The results were essentially positive. We confirmed some predictors found in earlier studies. In particular concerning comorbidity and alcohol in the family, questions remain for future studies. In practice, particular care should be given to patients with more serious impairments.