Ethnic Differences in Substance Use, Sexual Risk Behaviors, and Psychosocial Factors in a Sample of Heterosexual Methamphetamine Users

Abstract

Ethnic differences in measures of substance use, sexual risk behaviors, and psychosocial factors (depression, stigma, self-esteem) were examined in a sample of 402 heterosexual methamphetamine users (55.0% Caucasian, 29.9% African American, 15.1% Latino) who participated in a sexual risk reduction intervention between June 2001 and March 2005 in San Diego, California. Participants were primarily male (67%) and noncollege graduates (72%) and belonged to the low-income group (66%). African Americans were older when they first used methamphetamine and had used fewer grams in the past 30 days; Caucasians were more likely to inject. A larger percentage of African Americans reported anonymous sex partners in the past 2 months. African Americans reported lower levels of social stigma, and Caucasians reported lower self-esteem. Limitations and potential applications of these findings to prevention and treatment programs for ethnic minority populations are discussed.

Keywords:

• ethnic differences
• methamphetamine
• heterosexual
• sexual risk behavior
• psychosocial

Notes

¹ The journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.

² The reader is reminded that these three “ethnic” categories, consensualized by the U.S. Census Bureau, each represent heterogeneity for a range of functioning, adaptational, lifestyle, and identification parameters and issues. Editor's note.

³ The reader is asked to consider that “risk” and “protective” factors are often noted in the literature, without adequately noting their dimensions (linear, nonlinear), “demands,” the critical conditions which are necessary for either of them to operate (begin, continue, become anchored and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to operate and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically based, individual and/or systemic stakeholder-bound, based upon “principles of faith” or something else. What is necessary—endogenously as well as exogenously—for the posited “risk” or “protection” to become manifest and to be sustained? This is necessary to clarify if the term is not to remain as yet another shibboleth in a field of many stereotypes. Editor's note.