Alcoholism indicators: nonreliability of events partially related to alcohol abuse.

Certain events partially associated with alcohol abuse (e.g., all hepatic cirrhosis) as well as those wholly associated with alcohol abuse (e.g., alcoholic cirrhosis) have been used to assess changes in alcoholism rates over time. In this paper, events partially associated with alcohol abuse are compared with events wholly correlated with alcohol abuse. Location and time of the study was the state of Minnesota from 1965 to 1977. Taken as a whole, the partially related events fail to show an increase in alcoholism while the wholly related events point to an increase. The literature on these alcohol-related events is reviewed, and theories for the discrepancies between partially and wholly related events are offered.