TY  - JOUR
PY  - 1995//
TI  - Cognitive recovery with abstinence and its relationship to family history for alcoholism
JO  - Journal of studies on alcohol
A1  - Drake, A. I.
A1  - Butters, N.
A1  - Shear, P. K.
A1  - Smith, T. L.
A1  - Bondi, M.
A1  - Irwin, M.
A1  - Schuckit, Marc A.
SP  - 104
EP  - 109
VL  - 56
IS  - 1
N2  - OBJECTIVE: The relationship between drinking relapse and family history for alcoholism to cognitive functioning was investigated in alcoholics who completed a 28-day inpatient treatment program. METHOD: The current study examined 144 primary alcoholics who completed a battery of cognitive tests on admission to treatment and at a 3-4 month follow-up visit. Participants were classified as either family history positive (FH+) (n = 86) or family history negative (FH-) (n = 58) based on information on alcohol dependence in first degree relatives. The subjects were further classified as drinkers (n = 56) or abstainers (n = 88) at follow-up, based upon information gathered about their drinking practices during the interval. RESULTS: There were no differences between the groups based on family history status at admission to treatment. Comparisons made at follow-up revealed that the abstainers' (both FH+ and FH-) performance improved. The FH+ drinkers' performance was worse than that of both the FH- drinkers and the FH+ abstainers at follow-up. The poor performance of the FH+ drinkers relative to the FH- drinkers was not attributable to differences in drinking consumption during the test-retest interval. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that alcoholics who maintain abstinence following treatment show improvement on cognitive testing at follow-up; both FH+ and FH- abstainers showed improvement, indicating that a positive family history of alcoholism does not impede recovery that occurs with abstinence. The most important finding, however, is that the FH+ drinkers show greater deterioration at follow-up compared to the other groups.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0096-882X
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/
ID  - ref1
ER  -