Grounds for disability pension. The younger abuser as compared with older abusers of alcohol

Current social legislation in Sweden prescribes a great degree of restrictivity in the granting of disability pensions to young abusers of alcohol. In order to test whether this prescription is really applied, a comparison between 29 abuser applicants up to age 46 and 32 and over the age of 46 years was carried out. The total of 61 abusers represented all 78 first-time applicants with an abuse over a period of 1 1/2 years who were living in a geographically defined, mixed urban-rural region in the Swedish county of Ostergötland. The period lasted from 1st January 1978 until 1st July 1979. The participants' quality of life was examined in a multidisciplinary fashion. In line with the prescribed restrictivity, the younger group proved to be fundamentally worse, primarily in socio-psychological and psychiatric respects. In addition, they also demonstrated a greater degree of alcohol injury. Besides the legislative situation, even situational conditions were proposed as explanatory factors for the empirical findings. This is the fourth report from the research project "Abuse of alcohol - Disability pension - Quality of life".