Background: This is a continuation of a formerly published series of papers on gender differences in alcoholism. The aim of this part is to scope at selected items of family history (prevalence of alcoholism and other mental disorders), personal history and current case history (epilepsy, accidents, aggressiveness, suicidal activity, smoking). Methodology is based as previously on retrospective analysis of the documentation of 431 patients with F10 diagnosis (lCD-10) admitted to inpatient treatment at the Psychiatric Department in Bardejov between 2004 and 2008. Results: Men and women showed a similar prevalence of alcoholism (together 39,2 %) and other mental disorders (10,7 %) in first-degree relatives, an isolated analysis of a selected sample of 218 patients hospitalized within a shorter period, but exclusively diagnosed as alcohol dependent (F10.2, lCD-l0), did not bring more significance (37,0 % females, 41,4 % males had a first-degree relative suspect of serious abuse or dependence, p = 0,8347). Alcoholic father (28,9 % of the 218 patients sample) and brother (17,4 %) were the most common indicated amongst relatives both in men and women, but women showed a higher frequency of multiple alcoholism (22,2 % vs. 10,6 %, p = 0,0464), combination of "father + brother (+ other)" being the most common in both sexes. The results of personal analysis confirm a higher prevalence of epilepsy (16,8 % vs. 3,6 %, p = 0,0080), and mildly, but not significantly, higher prevalence of smoking (62,5 % vs. 56,9 %, p = 04316) in men compared to women; women on the other hand displayed a higher frequency of suicidal ideas (12,7 % vs. 5,1 %, p = 0,0139); nonetheless, there was no significant difference found in the prevalence of intentional self harm, accidents and aggression between the two sexes. Conclusion: The results confirm from a great part literary data on gender differences and similarities in family and personal history; nevertheless, it is impossible to confirm a more harmful effect of alcoholism on women s health taking into account prevalence of epilepsy and disablement rates which are higher in men. Next step shall be the analysis of laboratory markers of alcoholism.

Key words: alcoholism – gender differences – sex – family history – epilepsy – smoking – intentional self-harm