Integration of biological and psychosocial research on alcoholism

This paper weights the extent and potential of efforts to integrate biological and psychosocial research on alcoholism. It begins with a review of what is known in five crucial domains--pathophysiology, psychopathology, etiology and course, treatment, and prevention--that could facilitate this integration. It then considers, for the same five domains, the modest additional increments in knowledge that would markedly enhance the effectiveness of these integration efforts. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how we might proceed from what we know to what we need to know in the further pursuit of biological-psychosocial integration.