Trends of Adult Female Substance Abuse from 1992 to 2007

Adult female substance abuse affects not only the women who choose to use alcohol and drugs in an abusive fashion, but it can have profound effects on their children. Injuries and deaths caused by substance abuse, child abuse and neglect, and fetal alcohol syndrome are all secondary consequences of adult female substance abuse.

Information provided by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) indicates that approximately 5.1 percent of all adult women (approximately 5.9 million) needed alcohol treatment in 2008. This number has stayed relatively steady since 2002, but several characteristics of the population have changed between 1992 and 2007.

Overall the number of female substance abuse treatment admissions increased between 1997 and 2002, from 27.4 percent to 32.5 percent. However, the number of women reporting alcohol as the primary reason for treatment declined from 47.4 percent to 33.4 percent.

Use of secondary and tertiary substances with alcohol as the primary substance also decreased, from 19.2 percent to 14.9 percent.

The trends also show an increase in age among those women admitted for alcohol abuse treatment. The mean age in 1992 was 34.1 years, while in 2002 the mean age was 37.9 years.

There was little change in the racial and ethnic components of female adults admitted for substance abuse. There were increases in the proportion of adult female primary alcohol admissions that never married (from 35.4 to 45.1 percent) and had some college education (from 26.5 to 33.0 percent).

Between 1992 and 2007 the principal sources of referrals for adult female admissions remained stable. The most common types of referrals were self-referral and referrals from the justice system.

While reporting a psychiatric problem at admission is a voluntary item in the Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) system, there was a significant increase in psychiatric problems reported among female adult admissions between 1992 and 2007. The percentage almost doubled, from 17.7 percent to 33.6 percent.

Another important component of treatment for alcohol and substance abuse is the transferring of an admission to another level of treatment or the completion of a treatment program. In 2007, almost two-thirds of adult female discharges with alcohol abuse as the primary treatment program completed treatment or transferred to another level of care.

One notable aspect of these findings is that the number of admissions for primary alcohol abuse has declined from 1992 to 2007, even though the number of women needing treatment for alcohol abuse has remained relatively stable. This information indicates a need for additional alcohol and substance abuse screening in multiple settings.

Additionally, the findings indicate the importance of age and gender screening, along with psychiatric screenings for female adult admissions for alcohol abuse treatment.