Substance use disorders/Expert

The following article deals with sex/gender  differences in substance use disorders.

Epidemiology

Incidence/Prevalence

According to a study from 2013, 31.2 percent of men and 15.2 percent of women in Germany have been addicted to some substance at least once in their lives.[1] The significantly higher prevalence of males who have ever been affected results from various current surveys: For most substances, the prevalence of general, risky or dependence-induced use is higher among men than among women, although for some substances there are converging trends.[2] The higher prevalence of the male sex with regard to most substances usually only manifests itself in cohorts of young adulthood. In addition, men usually consume a larger amount of the same substance. Thus, gender differences are most evident in the area of the highest reported consumption. Nevertheless, there are indications that the prevalences of both sexes (especially for smoking) converge, i.e. in younger cohorts the gender differences are lowest, in older cohorts highest. It can be assumed that these cohort effects reflect a cultural change. While smoking was not well regarded among women in the past, it is socially accepted today.  It needs to be examined whether this is really a cultural phenomenon or whether the differences in the cohorts represent stable values over different life stages. Further research is needed in this regard.[3]

The 12-month prevalences of dependence (according to DSM-IV) on licit and illicit substances can be found in figures 1 and 2.

Substance-specific epidemiological data can be found under the following links:

• Alcohol addiction/Expert
• Nicotine addiction/Expert

Literature

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License

This article is published under the Creative Commons License. The full license content can be retrieved here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

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Last changed: 2022-04-21 14:42:30