Introduction to the First of Two Special Sections on Substance Abuse and Child Maltreatment

child maltreatment is well documented and is apparent in at least four separate lines of inquiry. First, substance abuse is highly prevalent among child welfare populations. Estimates vary widely based on definitions of substance abuse (ranging from any use to evidence of a substance use disorder), the child protection sample being studied (ranging from all reported parents to only those with children in outof-home care), and the manner of data collection (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). Overall, it is estimated that substance abuse is present in between one third and two thirds of families involved with child protective services (CPS; Famularo, Stone, Barnum, & Wharton, 1986; Murphy et al., 1991; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1993), with one study finding parental substance abuse in 79% of parents with children in out-ofhome care (Besinger, Garland, Litrownik, & Landsverk, 1999). Furthermore, also within child welfare populations, substance abuse has emerged as a key risk factor for re-reports or recurrence in families with histories of child welfare involvement (e.g., English, Marshall, & Orme, 1999; Terling, 1999; Wolock & Magura, 1996). Second, and conversely, maltreatment and maltreatment risk is also elevated among parents with substance use disorders. For example, Black and Mayer (1980) reported that among 200 parents being treated for alcohol or opiate use disorders, serious neglect was present in 30.5% of parents and physical or sexual abuse was present in 22.5% (overlapping). A 1993 study of families in which at least one parent met criteria for an alcohol use disorder found rates of child maltreatment 3 times higher than in comparison families (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1993). Ammerman, Kolko, Kirisci, Blackson, and Dawes (1999) found greatly increased rates of elevated Child Abuse Potential Inventory (Milner, 1986) scores in parents with past or present substance abuse disorders (25% vs. 1.4% among fathers, and 41.5% vs. 5.7% among mothers). A number of cohort and case-control studies, involving representative and at-risk samples, have also suggested that substance abuse is a clear correlate of child maltreatment. Most recently, in this journal, Hanson and colleagues (2006) examined data from a nationally representative sample of 4,023 adolescents who participated in the National Survey of Adolescents. Hanson et al. found physical abuse to be 2.0 and 2.4 times more likely among families in which alcohol and drug use (respectively) were present. Chaffin and colleagues, using rigorous definitions and a large probabilistic sample, found parents who reported neglect or physical abuse of a child to be approximately 3 times as likely to also have a substance use disorder; this finding held true in a matched case-control study using one wave of survey data (Kelleher, Chaffin, Hollenberg, & Fischer, 1994) and in a prospective study of the onset of physical abuse or neglect between observations (Chaffin, Kelleher, & Hollenberg, 1996). Chaffin and colleagues also found that substance abuse was more strongly and/or consistently associated with maltreatment than depression or social and demographic variables such as poverty. Similarly, in a case-control study of 101 mothers with a history of significant child neglect and a matched comparison sample of 102 mothers with no history of neglect, I found an index of substance Introduction to the First of Two Special Sections on Substance Abuse and Child Maltreatment