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Albuquerque Journal, October 15, 2001

Local Doc Finds DWI-Mental Problems Link
By Jackie Jadrnak, Journal Staff Writer

Alcohol-related treatment might not be enough after someone is arrested for drunken driving, according to a study conducted by a local doctor.

People convicted of DWI are more likely than the general population to have drug and psychiatric problems, said Dr. Sandra Lapham, director of the Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest.

Lapham said she was surprised to find a high rate of mental health problems among people with drunken-driving convictions, especially since 80 percent of the people in the study were first offenders. These are people, she said, who tend to say they don't have a drinking problem – "It was my brother's birthday and I just had a little too much to drink. I've never done it before."

The study is published in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, published by the American Medical Association.

It tracked people convicted of DWI in Bernalillo County five years after they were referred to a screening program. Interviews were conducted with 612 women and 493 men from 1994 to 1997. Of that group, 85 percent of women and 91 percent of men indicated that they had lifetime problems with alcohol use.

In addition, 32 percent of the women and 38 percent of the men admitted problems with drug abuse. Standardized questionnaires also showed that half of the women and one-third of the men also showed symptoms of at least one mental illness — most often depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

"The main thing I want to bring home," Lapham said, "is that, once someone gets a conviction for DWI, it's an opportunity to evaluate them for alcohol and other psychiatric disorders.

"If you can effectively address them, we may be able to prevent a lot of future (troublesome) behavior."

One of the problems with court-ordered treatment for a DWI conviction is that it focuses narrowly on alcohol, she said. That treatment usually consists of eight sessions of group therapy, she said.

"If you're not dealing with the whole person, it's understandable that problems have continued," she said.

Mandated treatment often doesn't work, though, according to Lapham. People have to want to change, she said. Yet people who want to get help often get shut out of programs that are too full, she said. "We need to open up our wallets as well as our hearts and make treatment on demand for alcohol and drug programs available," she said.

Dr. George Woody of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine had an accompanying commentary to Lapham's article in the medical journal. He recommended that people convicted of DWI have frequent breath and urine tests for the following year. Also, sliding pay scales should be devised to make treatment more accessible, he wrote.

"Changes such as these would be costly...," he wrote. "When seen in the context of high levels of recidivism and deaths caused by intoxicated drivers, however, is it too naive or idealistic to ask why we cannot begin to examine ways we might improve on the steps that have been taken to address this important public safety problem?"

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