Alcohol abuse and dependence commonly exist with other psychiatric conditions and people who are dependent on alcohol have a higher probability of abusing other psychoactive substances. This can affect the prognosis of psychiatric disorders and also puts services under pressure.

The primary aim was to look into the incidence of psychiatric illnesses and comorbid use of other psychoactive substances amongst patients in an inpatient alcohol detoxification centre.

The study was cross-sectional survey. Data was collected from 100 consecutive inpatients admitted for alcohol detoxification in the unit in 2010. Data was collected from clinical records of the patients and we looked at demographics, daily alcohol consumption at the time of admission, incidence of psychiatric problems, use of other psychoactive substances and current episodes and history of delirium tremens and alcohol-related seizures.

Depression was present in 35% of patients, Psychotic illness was present in 10% patients, 5% of patients were diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder and 6% had a diagnosis of Personality Disorders. There was a past history of Deliberate Self- harm in 36% of patients. As far as comorbid psychoactive substance misuse is concerned, 42% admitted using regular Cannabis, 12% were dependent on Opiates and 11% were using Cocaine.

This study reveals that comorbidity of psychiatric illnesses and other psychoactive substance misuse is high amongst patients dependent on alcohol. There appears to be a clear relationship between these two and further research is needed to investigate if the relationship is just causal or just an association.