Drug abuse among state hospital psychiatric inpatients with particular reference to PCP

The pattern of alcohol and drug abuse among 78 consecutive newly admitted patients to a middle Tennessee state hospital psychiatric ward was examined. There was a high prevalence of alcohol, marijuana, hypnotic sedative, and stimulant abuse among this patient population within 1 month prior to their hospitalization. However, only 1 patient gave a history of PCP abuse and none of the 76 plasma samples analyzed by the GCN and GC2-N methods was positive for PCP or its common analogues. This study does not support a high prevalence of PCP abuse among this group of psychiatric patients.