The recovery from alcohol problems over the life course: the Lundby longitudinal study, Sweden

The aim of this paper is to 'look behind the statistics' and to study alcohol-related problems over time and to portray the recovery (treated and untreated) from these problems over the life course in a subset of 41 males, defined as DSM-IV alcoholics from the Lundby general population project. The subjects were interviewed with semi-structured interviews by a psychiatrist. There was only minimal attrition. An analysis was made of the distribution of alcohol-related problems among the current alcoholic group compared to the recovered one at follow-up. Due to the limited number of subjects the calculations were mainly descriptive. The dominant problems were medical (64% vs. 25%), mental (45% vs. 17%), family (27% vs. 0%) and work (18% vs. 8%). The overall functioning assessed by the GAF scale implied a change from continuous to transient symptoms and problems in the recovered group. The subjects' attributions of reasons for recovery were social stabilization (84%), treatment (58%), family and peer pressure (58%) and medical complications (33%). It is argued that the qualitative findings might be used to complement the large statistical investigations in order to understand how to link alcohol-related problems and social consequences to the life course studies.