The effect of financial management on alcohol-related hospitalization
Article Abstract:
To assess whether the rehabilitation of alcoholics should include provisions to help them manage their finances and post-hospitalization resources, 8 female and 53 male alcoholic patients in a New Zealand hospital were studied. The patients ranged in age from 30 to 74 years with an average age of 57. Their alcohol-related disabilities were severe and required lengthy or frequent periods of hospitalization. For example, 21 patients had alcohol-related amnesic disorders, four had alcohol-related dementias, two had mild mental retardation, and 16 either had major depressive episodes or a diagnosed personality disorder. Over the six-year study period, their budgets were calculated and arrangements made for services such as rent, utilities, meals, groceries, clothing, transportation, health care and personal and home necessities. Comparisons were then made between each patient's alcohol-related hospitalizations for equal periods of time before and after financial management. The duration of alcohol-related hospitalizations was found to be reduced by 86 percent after the patients had received financial management assistance. Although these results require replication, they strongly suggest that the provision of financial management to ensure adequate shelter and basic post-hospitalization needs may greatly enhance the efficacy of rehabilitation of chronic alcoholics with alcohol-related neurologic disorders and other psychosocial impairments. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
Publication Name: American Journal of Psychiatry
Subject: Psychology and mental health
ISSN: 0002-953X
Year: 1991
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Drug-related alopecia in patients treated with tricyclic antidepressants
Article Abstract:
Alopecia (hair loss limited to one area or more generally distributed) can be caused by drugs and usually reverses once the drugs are stopped. The severity of drug-related alopecia ranges from minimal hair loss, which may go unnoticed, to complete baldness; thus, the true incidence is unknown. In the case of alopecia caused by tricyclic antidepressants, the incidence may be greater than has been previously suspected. Two cases are presented. The first involves a 35-year-old woman and the second, a 9-year-old girl. Both patients took tricyclic antidepressants (imipramine and desipramine, respectively) for treatment of psychiatric symptoms. Diffuse hair loss on the scalp followed. Hair loss returned to normal after the drugs were stopped, and hair regrowth was completed within several weeks. Despite the fact that alopecia is a known side effect of all tricyclic antidepressant drugs, the condition is rarely reported in the literature. Diagnosis is difficult and often accomplished only after hair regrowth when medication is stopped. In the present cases, it was not possible to prove that the hair loss was the result of treatment with antidepressant drugs, but the relationship between the timing of hair loss and the beginning and end of treatment is suggestive. Significant hair loss due to treatment with tricyclic antidepressants is thought to be rare. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
Publication Name: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Subject: Psychology and mental health
ISSN: 0022-3018
Year: 1991
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
- Abstracts: Epidemiological analysis of alcohol and drug use as risk factors for psychotic experiences. Technical supervision and turnover among engineers and technicians: influencing factors in the work environment
- Abstracts: Guns and suicide: possible effects of some specific legislation. Should physician-assisted suicide be legalized? A challenge for the 21st century
- Abstracts: The psychotherapies in the context of new developments in the neurosciences and biological psychiatry. part 2 A bad case of mixed metaphors: psychiatry, law, politics, society, and Ezra Pound
- Abstracts: Transformations in self-understanding in surgeons whose treatment efforts were not successful. Long-term outcome of antidepressant treatment for bulimia nervosa