Men were almost twice as likely to abuse alcohol if they had experienced
a combination of physical and sexual abuse as children. Women were almost
twice as likely to have alcohol problems if they had been sexually abused
and attended boarding school.
The study, published in the September issue of the American
Journal of Preventive Medicine, is the first to look at adverse childhood environments
as a risk factor for alcoholism across a large number of tribes, say Mary
P. Koss, Ph.D., and Nicole Yuan, Ph.D., of the University of Arizona and
colleagues.
Alcohol abuse exacts a terrible toll among several Native American communities,
making it important to understand factors that might influence alcohol
abuse among the population, according to the researchers.
With the help of Native American interviewers and the
cooperation of leaders of tribes in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Oregon, Maine
and Arizona, the researchers
collected information on adverse childhood experiences ranging from emotional
neglect to physical abuse to adoption and boarding school attendance
and drinking habits from 1,660 people. The participants were interviewed
by
a person from within their tribe or someone from another tribe, depending
on tribal leaders’ preferences.
The percentage of alcohol dependent tribe members varied significantly
among tribes, from only one to two percent in one tribe to 56 percent of
the men in another. Across all the tribes, 30 percent of the men and 18
percent of the women were diagnosed with some form of alcohol dependence.
More than half said that they had at least one parent with alcohol problems.
More than two-thirds of respondents reported at least one kind of adverse
childhood experience. Physical neglect and abuse were among the most widely
reported childhood experiences, while emotional neglect was the least prevalent.
Koss and colleagues also found that women who knew more
about their tribal languages had a higher risk of alcohol problems, while
women who lived
close to their tribal communities were less likely to abuse alcohol.
However, these same influences did not significantly affect men’s
likelihood of alcohol problems.
“The women’s language finding is hard to interpret because
with our data, we can’t say which came first, alcohol problems or
language skills. It could be that the language facility was learned in
tribal sobriety programs and was not a precursor to alcoholism,” Koss
says.
Based on their findings, the researchers highlight the need to develop
social programs for reservation-based families to lessen exposure to adult
drinking and to establish intensive preventive education on childhood sexual
abuse.
The study was supported by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism.
