Associations among Violence Exposure, Mental Disorder, Substance Use Disorder, and HIV

Abstract

This study's primary aim was to provide co-occurring mental and substance use disorders (COD) prevalence data as well as additional epidemiologic data needed to more firmly establish violence exposure and COD as principally associated with HIV infection. Participants were clients assessed for alcohol and other drug treatment through the network of providers overseen by the Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board of Cuyahoga County (Ohio) from December 12, 2001 through July 18, 2007. Study design was a matched comparison of two groups of equal number (N = 638): HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected clients. The prevalence of COD with HIV infection was determined to be 26.3%. Through logistic regression modeling, both violence exposure and COD were found to be associated with HIV infection.

KEYWORDS:

• COD
• co-occurring disorders
• HIV
• mental disorder
• substance use disorder
• SUD
• violence exposure

We would like to acknowledge the following: Thomas Williams of the former Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board of Cuyahoga County, Ohio (now part of Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Cuyahoga County), who generously shared his expertise of data analysis and of the dataset used in this research; Dr. Russ Kaye and Board Members of the former Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board who agreed to our study and supported it; and, last, the clients of the former Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board who possessed the courage to be assessed for substance use disorders, providing the data upon which this study was designed. A version of this paper was previously presented at the Twenty-First National Symposium on Doctoral Research in Social Work at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, on April 18, 2009.

Notes

^a Exact matches on age were not found for six cases; these cases were matched within ± 3 years.

^a Hosmer and Lemeshow test.