Alcoholism is a progressive disease that develops in connection with prolonged abuse of alcohol with the formation of pathological attraction to alcohol, which is due to mental and then physical dependence on it. Alcoholism can begin either without psychoses or with the onset of psychotic episodes of various psychopathological structure and duration. The cause of such psychoses can be both alcohol intoxication and metabolic disorders due to liver pathology. Alcohol intoxication can be a provoking factor in the development of endogenous psychoses. At the last stages of alcoholism, the imbecility of organic type develops.
Nowadays, about 150 million people on the globe expose their health to serious risk due to use of alcohol and psychoactive materials (K. Hutin, 2001). Alcohol is very popular in the whole world. Its maximum consumption is per regions with a high level of economic development: their annual indices are 5-10 litres of absolute alcohol per adult. The level of alcohol consumption in Russia has the disposition to increase and is about 15 litres (E.A. Koshkina, 2002). According to WHO, in Western countries, 67% of men drink alcohol regularly, and 28% abuse it, and up to 18% are addicted to alcohol (T. Miller, 1997). Most researchers estimate the current drug-abuse situation in Russia to be extremely strain. At least 10 million residents of Russia have alcoholism (V.P. Alferov, 1999), percentage-wise, it is 7% of the inhabitants (G.P. Entin, N.R. Dineeva, 1996). According to the Scientific Addictology Centre of the Russian Ministry of Health, the number of hospitalised patients with alcoholism in Russia in 2004 was 647,512 people, which is by 28.4% higher than in 1999. Along with that, the primary morbidity of alcoholism, including alcoholic psychoses was 152.7 per 100,000 inhabitants (by 54% higher than in 1999).