Personality and Sociologic Factors in the Prognosis and Treatment of Chronic Alcoholism

Psychological tests in psychopathological prognosis.

“…In this study no attempt seems to have been made to define and measure extraversion objectively. Other suggestions of prognostic personality factors for alcoholics have been even less objective and either not subjected to confirmatory study (88,109,115) or not confirmed when reinvestigated (52,166). Somatic illness.…”

“…A number of reports (4,6,7,8,52,54,58,73,149,159,166,172) have related outcome to clinical estimates of personality or behavioral traits. By and large such approaches leave much to be desired in the way of controls and reproducibility.…”

“…Tillotson and Fleming (52) indicated that empirical findings may be less reliable than they appear at first glance. After an attempt to confirm the prognostic efficacy of a number of personality traits they had found retrospectively important for chronic alcoholism (166), they concluded that "the outcome of treatment of chronic alcoholism has little apparent relation to sociological or personality traits" (52, p. 744).…”

A Comparison of Alcoholics with and without Coexisting Affective Disorder

“…Studies ofalcohol problems among manicdepres sive patients reveal rates foralcoholism of8â€"36 per cent (Freed, 1970;Morrison, 1974;Dunner et a!, 1979); conversely 5â€"9 per cent of alcoholics are said to exhibit co-existing affective disorder (Tillotson et a!, 1937;Amark, 1951;Sherfey, 1955). Depression as a secondary symptom is also frequently reported in association with alcohol addiction (Weingold et a!, 1968;Weissman eta!, 1980).…”