Depressive symptoms and persistence in treatment for alcohol dependence

The relationship between alcoholics' depressive symptoms during their preadmission evaluations and persistence in treatment for alcohol dependence is evaluated. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to determine the contribution of Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores to the prediction of the criterion: number of continuous days in treatment (up to 120). After several sources of variance were removed (age, race, age X race interaction, number of previous treatments and referral source), BDI score explained 10.8% of the criterion's variance. The full model explained 28.2%. Early withdrawal occurred in association with freedom from measurable affective distress during preadmission evaluation. A model for the prediction of number of continuous days in treatment is presented.