"Our findings clearly indicate that childhood abuse – more specifically, sexual abuse and combinations of sexual and physical abuse – is an important factor for the presence of comorbid anxiety disorders in treated alcoholics, particularly regarding social phobia, agoraphobia, and posttraumatic stress disorder," said Willemien Langeland, a freelance trauma researcher at the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, as well as first author of the study.
Langeland added that, compared with other environmental risk factors, childhood sexual and "dual" abuse contribute independently to a more severe clinical profile, that is, more comorbid diagnoses, in abused versus non-abused alcoholic patients. "This has not been previously demonstrated in treated alcoholics," she said. "In addition, more severe and intrusive forms of early sexual abuse as well as early multiple traumas are associated with a more complex symptom constellation that includes dysthymia (a chronic mood disorder) and suicidality."
"This study and a few others clearly show that seeing alcoholics only as people having an alcohol problem should be a thing of the past," said Onno van der Hart, professor of psychopathology of chronic traumatization in the department of clinical psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "Very often the alcohol dependency or abuse is an indissoluble part of a history of childhood maltreatment or other adverse life events or conditions, as well as a range of other mental health problems. Insight into such complex patterns will lead to the realization that the simple treatment goal of 'stopping drinking' makes sense only when the overall treatment is geared toward this more complex system of problems."
Researchers collected data during eight months (September 1994 - May 1995) from 155 alcoholics (122 males, 33 females) applying for treatment in a center for substance-use disorders. Alcoholic patients who reported childhood abuse – sexual, or sexual and physical – also reported social phobia, agoraphobia and PTSD more often than patients with no history of abuse.
"Our study suggests a distinct pattern of psychiatric comorbidity associated with childhood abuse in treatment-seeking alcoholics," said Langeland. "These findings point to the need for greater clinical attention to the role of childhood stressors in the evaluation and treatment of alcoholic patients. They also underline the importance of routine assessment of childhood trauma and possible trauma-related disorders in individuals presenting to alcohol-treatment services. Usually, standard or routine screening procedures do not include possible trauma-related symptoms such as PTSD, leading to under-diagnosis of this disorder."
Although this study's sample size of men was much greater than the sample size of women, Langeland said it is likely that gender may influence the way that alcohol problems and a co-occurring psychiatric disorder are related. "For example," she said, "there is some evidence suggesting that women may be at higher risk than men to the form of comorbidity in which the PTSD develops first. There is also a growing body of literature, both clinical and preclinical, that supports the notion of higher stress sensitivity in females under both acute and chronic conditions."
In addition, said Van der Hart, "it may well be that many female patients with alcohol dependence or abuse seek treatment in, or are referred to, more general mental-health centers. Perhaps their comorbid disorders, such as depression and anxiety disorders, as well as their trauma history (females report higher degrees of sexual abuse history), are more in the foreground, with the alcohol problems regarded as part of this overall clinical picture. Given this possibility, in future, research patients should also be recruited from other mental-health centers than these specialized substance-use treatment centers."
Both Langeland and Van der Hart noted that these findings raise questions about the use of alcohol as a form of self-medication to mitigate the negative psychological consequences of earlier abuse.
"PTSD appears to be a particularly important factor for alcohol problems in women who have experienced childhood sexual or physical abuse," said Langeland.
