Ten-Year Follow-up of Drug Abusers With Acute or Chronic Psychosis

To assess whether long-term outcome of former drug abuse patients who had psychotic symptoms was related to duration of psychosis before hospitalization, the authors rated the psychiatric, occupational, and residential outcome of 101 former drug abuse patients based on interviews conducted ten years after their admission to a psychiatric hospital. At admission, 45 had had psychotic symptoms for six months or more; 26 had had psychotic symptoms for less than six months; and 30 had not been psychotic. Seventy-one former psychiatric patients who had had a psychotic illness but had not abused drugs were also interviewed and rated. Drug abusers with chronic psychosis had significantly worse psychiatric outcome than the other drug abusers and significantly worse occupational outcome than acutely psychotic drug abusers. The authors conclude that drug abusers with chronic psychotic symptoms are a distinct subgroup of drug abusers who suffer from major psychotic illness.