NIDA Notes - NIDA Probes the Elusive Link Between Child Abuse and Later Drug Abuse Director's Column Volume 13, Number 2 NIDA Probes the Elusive Link Between Child Abuse and Later Drug Abuse NIDA Director Dr. Alan I. Leshner Research to better treat the emotional scars of drug abusers who are child abuse victims can draw on NIDA research on treating drug abusers with coexisting mental and emotional problems.
Substantial evidence points to childhood victimization as a major risk factor for later drug abuse.
At least two-thirds of patients in drug abuse treatment centers say they were physically or sexually abused as children. However, we know relatively little about the details of that apparent link between child abuse and later drug use. NIDA-supported researchers are working intensively on this critically important public health question. Determining the exact relationship between child abuse and drug abuse is exceedingly difficult given the role that variables such as poverty, family dysfunction, the level of social support for victims, or the child's gender and age play. Further, not all child abuse victims later become drug abusers.