Impact of Adolescent Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence on Substance Use in Early Adulthood

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Objective: Youth exposure to intimate partner violence has been theorized to increase the risk of adverse outcomes in adulthood including substance-use problems. However, the limited research on the association between early exposure to intimate partner violence and later alcohol-or drug-use problems is inconclusive. Using a prospective design, this study investigates whether adolescent exposure to intimate partner violence increases the risk for problem substance use in early adulthood and whether this relationship differs by gender. Method: The study uses a subsample (n = 508) of participants from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a longitudinal study of urban, largely minority adolescents that oversampled youth at high risk for antisocial behavior and drug use. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess whether adolescent exposure to intimate partner violence predicted increased odds of four indicators of problem substance use in early adulthood, controlling for parental substance use, adolescent maltreatment, and sociodemographic risk factors. Results: Exposure to severe intimate partner violence as an adolescent signifi cantly increased the odds of alcohol-use problems in early adulthood for young women (odds ratio = 5.63, p < .05) but not for young men. Exposure to intimate partner violence did not increase the odds of other substance-use indicators for either gender. Conclusions: Girls exposed to intimate partner violence may be at increased risk for problems with alcohol use in adulthood and should be a target for prevention and intervention efforts. Overall, however, the association between exposure to intimate partner violence and later substance-use problems is less than anticipated in this high-risk community sample. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 71, 219-230, 2010)

Association between Adverse Life Events and Addictive Behaviors among Male and Female Adolescents

“…The male-female differences in the relationship between substance use and adverse events appear to differ by event type. 15–17 For instance, while the associations between substance use and both interpersonal (e.g., breakdown of friendships) and violence events (e.g., victim of violence) tend to be stronger for female than male adolescents, 16, 17 the reverse appears to be true for instability/transition events (e.g., eviction) as they were positively associated with substance use among males and not females. 15 However, none of the above studies included gambling as part of a battery of addictive behaviors.…”

History of sexual, emotional or physical abuse and psychiatric comorbidity in substance-dependent patients

“…In general population, have been reported prevalences of abuse range between 6.2 and 33% (Finkelhor, 1994;Kendler et al, 2000;Lampe, 2002;Dube et al, 2003;Min et al, 2007;Pereda and Forns, 2007;Smith et al, 2010;Young-Wolff et al, 2011;Finkelhor et al, 2014). In substance-dependent patients samples, the prevalences found are higher than in general population, from 16 to 73% (Medrano et al, 1999;Hyman et al, 2007;Chermack et al, 2008;Douglas et al, 2010;Walton et al, 2011).…”

“…Women who have experienced intimate partner violence (Smith et al, 2010) and physical abuse in childhood (Lansford et al, 2010) have higher risk of developing an addiction than male victims of the same experiences.…”

Treating Adolescents with Family-Based Mindfulness

“…Substance Abuse : Although some studies found the association between child exposure to domestic abuse and later substance abuse problems to be muted (Smith, Elwyn, Ireland, & Thornberry, 2010 ), mostly there seems to be a consensus that children who suffered physical and sexual abuse, witnessed violence, and who have family members with substance use issues themselves, are at increased risk for substance abuse that appear to be moderated by the concurrent presence of PTSD symptoms (Kilpatrick et al, 2000 ). Similarly, parental substance abuse directly and signifi cantly increased the prevalence of child abuse, by about 1.4:1, while experiencing or witnessing violence increased adolescent substance abuse by a factor of about two (Kilpatrick et al, 2000 ).…”