Drug abuse has been implicated as one of the consequences of childhood victimization. This revised proposal seeks funding for secondary analysis of existing data as well as additional data collection. The design of this study overcomes many of the shortcomings of previous research, and the data set currently represents the most comprehensive, prospective, large scale, and long-term data base which addresses the consequences of early childhood victimization. The data set contains archival information from court records, official criminal history information from three levels of law enforcement at two time periods, and community level census tract information for a large sample of substantiated cases of early childhood physical and sexual abuse and neglect and matched controls (n=1,575) who were followed up and assessed. In-person interviews in young adulthood obtained information on psychiatric, cognitive, intellectual, social, familial and behavioral functioning (n=1,144). Despite the fact that extensive drug abuse information has been collected for these subjects, to date, no analyses have been undertaken. Specific substantive goals include: (1) to determine whether childhood victimization (physical and sexual abuse and neglect) increases risk for the development of drug abuse/dependence; (2) to examine consequences by gender, race/ethnicity, age, and type of abuse and/or neglect; (3) to examine the role of protective factors in mediating drug abuse/dependence, (4) to compare the prevalence of drug abuse/dependence in this sample of abused and/or neglected children and controls with a socio-demographically matched general population sample using ECA data; (5) to assess the extent of comorbidity in these abused and neglected individuals; (6) to examine relationships among childhood victimization, drug abuse, and criminal behavior, including violence and prostitution; and (7) to determine the extent of mortality (and cause of death) for these abused and/or neglected individuals and controls. One major methodological goal is to compare rates of drug abuse/dependence in individuals who retrospectively self-report childhood victimization with individuals who have documented (official) reports of childhood victimization. This study's cohort design permits the identification of populations at risk for drug abuse/dependence and yields findings with clear implications for developing primary prevention strategies and interventions.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 41 publications
