An Exploratory Attempt to Distinguish Subgroups Among Crack-Abusing African-American Women

Abstract

Despite the significant emergence of research on female addiction over the last two decades, specific research on African-American women substance abusers, particularly crack cocaine users, is limited. The identification of meaningful subgroups of substance abusing populations, particularly minority women is important both clinically, and because of their over-representation in the epidemiological data on crack cocaine use in many urban centers across this country. An extensive battery of instruments was administered to 110 women entering treatment in an intensive outpatient substance abuse treatment program in Philadelphia, serving women who are primarily indigent, African-American, and whose primary substance of abuse is crack cocaine. Factor analysis and cluster analysis procedures were utilized to classify women into subgroups across relevant clinical, behavioral, and background concerns relevant to studying substance abusing populations. Five conceptually meaningful subgroups emerged which classified women across various indicators such as HIV sex risk factors, personality traits/Axis II dimensions, clinical syndromes, psychological symptomatology, lifetime and recent drug and alcohol use, prior physical and sexual abuse, and social context variables such as parental addiction, and whether they live with a substance abuser. Attempts to classify women into identifiable clinical subtypes is essential in order to better inform treatment initiatives designed to serve this group, as well as prevention and community outreach intervention strategies which attempt to bring them into treatment.