알코올리즘으로 일 지역 상담 센터에 방문한 환자의 특성에 대한 연구

The Characteristics of Alcoholics Visiting at a Community Counseling Center

Objectives ： The therapeutic approach for a patient with alcohol dependence should match the patient’s characteristics, determined before treatment initiation. However, most services provided for these patient by hospitals and community counsel-ing centers do not usually differ. We conducted this study to evaluate drinking history and cognitive function of patients with-in each institution, in order to design an effective treatment ap-proach. Methods ： Alcohol-dependent patients visiting at a com-munity counseling center and a university hospital were included as study subjects and investigated for demographics and drink-ing history. In addition, we performed neuropsychological test-ing to evaluate IQ, memory, and executive function. Results ：TSignificant differences were found in terms of duration of drink-ing and blackout detected for drinking and blackout duration between the patients visiting at community counseling center and a university hospital (drinking duration, 22.74±13.47 vs. 33.14± 13.75, p＜0.05 and blackout duration, 9.79±9.41 vs. 18.43±13.21, p＜0.05). Patients visiting at community counseling center start-ed drinking at an earlier age than the patients visiting at univer-sity hospital (11% vs. 32%, p＜0.10). The patients visiting a com-munity counseling center had an executive function disability for IQ (χ=2.95, p=0.08). In addition, the patients visiting a com-munity counseling center started drinking at an earlier age than the patients visiting a university hospital (11% vs. 32%, p＜0.10). Conclusion : These findings suggested that the patients visiting at a community counseling center started drinking earlier, had been drinking longer, and had poorer cognitive function than patients visiting at university hospital. Therefore, different ther-apeutic services should be offered based on these characteristics.