Depression and substance abuse in handicapped young men.

A group of 42 young men with self-reported handicaps was compared with a group of 991 demographically similar nonhandicapped men. The research instrument was a highly structured questionnaire that elicited information about alcohol and drug use and other psychopathology in the subjects and their families. The results revealed that the handicapped men had more alcohol-related problems, were more likely to have used drugs, and had more instances of depression requiring mental health care. The family histories revealed more alcohol-related problems in the mothers and more drug use in the fathers of the handicapped men than in the control families.