Characterizing Anxiety Among Individuals Receiving Treatment for Alcohol and Substance Use Disorders.
Lisa H Domenico, Ben Lewis, Mythili Hazarika and 1 others
PMID 29126358WHAT IT FOUND
In inpatient substance use treatment, patients with subclinical anxiety resembled those with generalized anxiety disorder on several demographic, mood, and alcohol use measures.
The GAD group also had more comorbid use disorders than patients without anxiety symptoms.
Key findings
01Participants with subclinical anxiety and participants with GAD did not differ in depressive symptoms, state anxiety, recent alcohol amount, or maximum drinking amount.
02The GAD group reported more parental problem substance use and more comorbid use disorders than the No GAD group.
03No GAD participants had more education, and among recent drinkers they consumed less alcohol than participants with subclinical or GAD symptoms.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The cross-sectional design cannot show that anxiety symptoms caused substance use patterns or that one came first. The study relied on self-report and asked participants to recall ages of first use and regular use, so errors are possible. Regular substance use was not explicitly defined, so participants may have interpreted it differently. Diagnoses were probabilistic from a computerized interview, and 41% of No GAD, 19% of Subclinical, and 6% of GAD participants failed to meet criteria for any use disorder. Some analyses were based on smaller subsets, including 246 recent drinkers, 277 people with at least one use disorder, and only 61 people in the GAD group. The study did not test a treatment or measure recovery outcomes.
Declared interests
The supplied publication metadata lists NIH extramural research support. The article text supplied does not report author conflicts of interest or whether the funders designed or wrote the study.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that subclinical anxiety is the same as diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder or that treating anxiety will improve substance use outcomes. This is a cross-sectional description, and the GAD group had more comorbid use disorders than the subclinical group.