The American Psychiatric Association Practice Guideline for the Pharmacological Treatment of Patients with Alcohol Use Disorder

This article first appeared in The American Journal of Psychiatry. Reus VI, Fochtmann LJ, Bukstein O, Eyler E, Hilty DM, Horvitz-Lennon M. . . Wills, C. The American Psychiatric Association Practice Guideline for the Pharmacological Treatment of Patients with Alcohol Use Disorder. Am J Psychiatry 2017, 175:86-9.

At its July 2017 meeting, The APA Board of Trustees approved the APA Practice Guideline Writing Group’s
“Practice Guideline for the Pharmacological Treatment of Patients with Alcohol Use Disorder.” The full guideline is available at APA’s Practice Guidelines website.

INTRODUCTION

The goal of this guideline1 is to improve the quality of care and treatment outcomes for patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD), as defined by DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The guideline focuses specifically on evidencebased pharmacological treatments for AUD but also includes statements related to assessment and treatment planning that are an integral part of using pharmacotherapy to treat AUD.

AUD pharmacotherapy is a topic of increasing interest given the availability of several medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for this disorder and the burden of AUD in the population.

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