Alcohol problems increase while physician attention declines. 1967 to 1984

• Physician intervention holds the potential to arrest excess drinking in medical patients, but little information has been available on trends over time in medical attention to this problem. Three epidemiologic studies in which nationally representative samples of US adults were interviewed about their drinking practices and problems provide some data on this issue. Analyses of data from these three studies (conducted in 1967, 1979, and 1984)...