Pubdate: Fri, 21 Dec 2012
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2012 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Zoe McKnight

CHILDHOOD ABUSE, LIFE ON STREET LINKED TO USE

A pair of multi-year studies from the B. C. Centre for Excellence in
HIV/ AIDS and UBC found that homelessness and childhood abuse are
linked to intravenous drug use in youth.

Two separate studies set out to determine why some young people begin
to inject heroin, cocaine, amphetamine, or opioids while others do
not.

They were funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the
U. S. National Institute on Drug Abuse as part of a larger initiative
looking at various stages of a drug user's life story and the outcomes
of addiction.

The U. S. agency has contributed an estimated $ 400,000 per year for
five years and the Canadian agency $ 250,000 overall.

Childhood sexual abuse victims were twice as likely to use injection
drugs, according to a study in the journal Preventive Medicine. And
new research in the Journal of Adolescent Health showed homeless youth
are almost twice as likely to use intravenous drugs. Both peer
reviewed studies were released Thursday and were co- authored by Dr.
Evan Wood, co-director of the B. C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/ AIDS.

"The papers get at two very different phenomena," Wood said. "One is
how experiences in early life contribute to behaviours much later in
life, whether it be post-traumatic stress disorder or other
psychiatric consequences of early childhood abuse that lead people to
subsequent compulsive behaviour."

The homelessness paper shows genetics and living situations create "an
environment of risk" for addiction, he said.

Between 2005 and 2011, researchers spoke with 442 street-involved
youth in Vancouver for the study, which showed homeless youth -
defined as sleeping on the street or having no fixed address - were
almost twice as likely to become intravenous drug users. None of the
subjects had injected drugs at the beginning of the study, but 77 did
over the course of six years.

And 395 street-involved youth in Vancouver were interviewed by a team
of researchers between 2005 and 2010 for the abuse study.

Over the five years, 45 respondents began using intravenous drugs, and
one fifth of the adolescent and young adult drug users reported
childhood sexual abuse. A statistical analysis showed victims of
childhood sexual abuse were more than twice as likely to become
injection drug users.

Young people were selected based on initial criteria of having no past
drug injection history but use of other types of drugs in the previous
month. They offered blood samples and answered 45- minute
questionnaires twice yearly.

In both recent studies, young people themselves were followed over the
period during which they began to inject drugs. These studies are more
rare and considered better sources of data among academics.

Overall rates of injection drug use have declined in Vancouver, but
youth homelessness rates and the use of crystal meth and crack cocaine
have continued to rise.

Wood wants to alert policymakers to the possibility the course of
addiction can be altered.

"Ideally, we'd do a better job of taking care of long-standing
addicts and certainly there's a huge ability to alter people's life
trajectory through early intervention and evidence-based forms of
addiction treatment." 
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