© 1990 Medical Council on Alcohol
research-article
ALCOHOL USE AND LIMITATIONS IN PHYSICAL FUNCTIONING IN A SAMPLE OF THE LOS ANGELES GENERAL POPULATION
*The RAND Corporation Santa Monica CA 90406-2138
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital, UCLA School of Medicine Los Angeles CA 90024
Western Consortium for Public Health Berkeley, CA 94704-1103, U.S.A.
Received 4 April 1990; accepted 24 July 1990
The authors examined the relationships between drinking and perceived current health and physical functioning for a general household sample of Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites. These relationships differed by sex and by the presence or absence of medical and psychiatric comorbidity, but not by ethnicity. Among men with a chronic medical illness, current abstinence was uniquely associated with poor current health and physical functioning, especially when current abstinence was combined with a past history of alcohol disorder. Among men without a chronic medical illness, a history of alcohol disorder (irrespective of current drinking) was uniquely associated with poorer functioning. For women, among the medically or psychiatrically ill, drinking was not strongly associated with physical functioning; while among women without chronic medical or psychiatric illness, a history of drinking was uniquely associated with poor physical functioning. The authors interpret the findings in terms of adverse effects of drinking and chronic medical conditions on functioning and the tendency of physically limited and chronically medically ill persons to stop drinking.