[Epidemiologic study of alcoholism at the San Carlos University Hospital in Madrid]

We studied the patients that were admitted to the Psychiatry Department of Hospital Clinico San Carlos in Madrid from 1977 to 1986, evaluating the prevalence of the abuse and/or alcohol dependence and its distribution by the sociodemographic variables of age and sex. Of a total of 9,425 patients, 772 had a diagnosis of alcoholism which represented and 8.1% of the admittances. The associations of alcoholism with other psychiatric pathologies was analyzed by means of the study of double diagnosis. A 15.5% of the alcoholic patients admitted between 1981-1986 had a second diagnosis.