Can The Drinking Problem Index Provide Valuable Therapeutic Information For Recovering Alcoholic Adults?

Can The Drinking Problem Index Provide Valuable Therapeutic Information For Recovering Alcoholic Adults?

Kopera-Frye K; Wiscott R; Sterns H L

Aging & Mental Health

1999

1999-08

This study investigated the use of the Drinking Problems Index (DPI; Finney et al., 1991) with middle-aged and older adults in treatment for alcohol abuse. Created to screen for middle-aged and older problem drinkers in the community, the DPI is a 17-item inventory assessing the frequency of alcohol-related problems. Our interest was to explore a new purpose for this tool: that of identifying adverse consequences from drinking which can be targeted in treatment planning for this group. Seventy-one participants with a primary diagnosis of alcohol dependence were individually administered the DPI along with additional measures of psychosocial functioning. As predicted, our recovering alcoholic adults did endorse a similar pattern of adverse consequences as compared to the normative group, but at notably higher frequencies. Further, the older adult sub-group endorsed fewer total items on the DPI relative to our middle-aged sub-group, with a differential pattern of frequent items evident. Significant relationships were observed between the DPI and age, education, psychological distress, history of prior drug use and number of prior treatments for alcohol use. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed age, psychological distress and time in treatment significantly accounted for 51% of the variance in DPI scores, with emotional distress and younger age contributing sizeable unique variance over and above the other examined predictors. The findings suggest that the DPI may be useful not only in classifying older problem drinkers, but also as a means to suggest possible avenues for individualized therapeutic interventions.

age; early-onset; elderly people; epidemiology; Geriatrics & Gerontology; men; nonproblem; older persons; prevalence; problem drinkers; psychiatric-disorders; Psychiatry

Journal Article or Conference Abstract Publication

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246-256

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