BOSTON — Screening for alcohol problems at primary care visits and in the emergency room could help in the early identification of heavy drinkers who would otherwise not seek treatment, according to a poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.
The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) can quickly flag individuals with potential alcohol problems who are at higher risk for mental health and physical functioning problems, Ronda L. Dearing, Ph.D., of the State University of New York at Buffalo said in an interview.
Dr. Dearing and her colleagues at the University of Minnesota recruited 208 individuals with AUDIT scores that were above the recommended screening cutoffs (8 or above for men age 65 and under, and 7 or above for women and for men over age 65). Study participants were adults without severe cognitive impairments or psychotic disorders who had not received alcohol or drug treatment in the last year.
The participants were asked: Do you have concerns about your drinking, do you consider yourself a problem drinker, and do you consider yourself an alcoholic? Despite the fact that all the individuals enrolled in the study were potential problem drinkers, nearly two-thirds of the study participants said they did not have concerns about their drinking. About 80% said they did not consider themselves to be problem drinkers, and 78% said they were not alcoholics.
Higher scores on the AUDIT were significantly associated with poorer physical health, social functioning, and mental health on the Rand 36-Item Health Survey (SF-36). On the Brief Symptom Inventory, higher AUDIT scores were significantly associated with anxiety, somatization, psychoticism, paranoid ideation, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and depression.