Women in Treatment: Changing Over Time

Abstract

The early 1970s marked the transition of experimentation with illicit drugs from a deviant behavior to a normative behavior among adolescents in the United States as well as the resurgence of the feminist movement in this country. A sample of 572 women from 21 treatment centers in 11 states was divided into two groups — age 35 and over, and under 35 — to roughly correspond to whether they had reached adulthood before or after these cultural shifts. Younger and older women exhibit significant differences with respect to substance use patterns and prevalence of eating disorders, childhood antisocial behaviors, suicide attempts, and abuse by boyfriends and spouses.