Prognostic implications of various drinking patterns in psychiatric patients.

The authors examined the drinking patterns of 198 first admission nonalcoholic psychiatric patients to determine the relationship among drinking behavior, severity of pathology, and prognosis. Heavy drinking in the psychiatric sample was not associated with increased levels of pathology and poor prognosis. To the contrary, among these nonalcoholic patients the abstainers and occasional drinkers showed the most severe pathology and poorest prognosis of all drinking groups.