Gender Comparisons Among Asian American and Pacific Islander Patients in Drug Dependency Treatment

ABSTRACT

Background: Few studies have focused on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs), despite indications of increasing substance abuse among AAPIs in recent years. Objectives: This prospective longitudinal study examined gender differences among AAPIs in treatment. Methods: The study included 567 (177 women, 390 men) AAPI patients drawn from two prior studies, one with 32 community treatment programs in 13 California counties (CalTOP, 3, 9 months), and another project including 36 treatment sites in 5 California counties (TSI, 3, 12 months). Baseline and follow-up assessments utilized the Addiction Severity Index(ASI). A subset of patients was assessed at 3 and 9/12 months (n = 106). Results:  Significant gender-related differences were observed at baseline: fewer women than men were employed or never married. More women were living with someone having alcohol and drug problems. Methamphetamine was the primary drug for women and men, followed by alcohol and heroin. Compared to AAPI men, AAPI women reported greater problem severity in family/social relationships (0.18 vs. 0.11, p <.001), employment (0.68 vs. 0.56, p <.001), and mental health (0.19 vs. 0.14, p <.01). Relative to women, AAPI men reported greater treatment satisfaction at the 3-month follow-up. Significant improvements at follow-up were observed in family, alcohol, drug, and legal domains for both genders, and in mental health for men only. Compared to AAPI men, AAPI women demonstrated significantly greater improvements in drug problems (ΔASI = 0.07, p <.05). Conclusions: Gender differences revealed in this study suggest a need for a greater treatment focus on psychiatric problems for AAPI women and drug use problems for AAPI men.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender difference
• Asian American and Pacific islander
• substance use
• treatment outcome

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse [Grant numbers K05 DA017648 and P30 DA016383].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yun Han

Yun Han's research interests include health services research and epidemiology related to medical care access. She has worked at UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs to understand issues of access to substance abuse treatment, treatment adherence, and treatment outcome. She has been recently focused on exploring the relationship between access to medication, medication adherence, and quality of care in skin conditions, diabetes, and kidney disease in old populations.

Veronique Lin

Veronique Lin has a Master's in Clinical Psychology, with a concentration in Marriage and Family Therapy from Pepperdine University. Her research interests include substance abuse and related influences, including multicultural and acculturation factors, and acute and transgenerational trauma effects. She has clinical experience working with trauma, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, adjustment disorders, addiction, co-occurring disorders, acculturation issues, and life phase and relational difficulties, primarily with children and adolescents in underserved areas in Los Angeles.

Fei Wu

Fei Wu's doctoral research at the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs focused on substance abuse treatment and HIV/AIDS prevention. Her post-doctoral work at the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Maryland, College Park, concentrated on the social networks of people living with HIV/AIDS. Her current research, at the Los Angeles County, has extended to evaluations of large scale social service programs, such as the turn-over rates of In-Home Support Service workers, and the cost analysis of LA County Services for the homeless.

Yih-Ing Hser

Yih-Ing Hser is Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs and the Director of the Center for Advancing Longitudinal Drug Abuse Research. As a trained quantitative psychologist, she has extensive experience in health services research, treatment evaluation, and long-term follow-up research, derived from her prior and ongoing research projects. She has been conducting research in the field of substance abuse and its treatment since 1980 and has extensive experience in research design and advanced statistical techniques applied to substance abuse data. In addition to gender-related issues in substance abuse and treatment, Dr. Hser has published in the areas of treatment evaluation, epidemiology, natural history of drug addiction, and innovative statistical modeling development and application.