CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH PREGNANT WOMENS UTILIZATION OF SUBSTANCE-ABUSE TREATMENT SERVICES

There is a dearth of substance abuse treatment programs available to p regnant substance-using women, However, even when specialized substanc e abuse: treatment programs are offered to these high-risk women, some women will choose not to enter treatment. To gain a better understand ing concerning the characteristics of pregnant substance-using women r elated to their decisions regarding treatment utilization, this study compares two groups of substance users: 93 pregnant women who accepted offered substance-related treatment services, and 89 pregnant women w ho declined the same services. All women were interviewed and informat ion was gathered concerning their sociodemographic characteristics, th eir types and levels of substance use, substance use by their family m embers, and their experiences of being victims of violence. Bivariate analyses found that, compared to women who declined treatment, women w ho accepted treatment were more likely to be African-American, to be s ingle (never married), and to have a significantly greater number of c hildren. Bivariate analyses also showed that, compared to women who de clined treatment, women who accepted treatment had more severe substan ce abuse problems and were more likely to have previously undergone tr eatment for a substance problem, Women who accepted treatment were twi ce as likely to have partners who used alcohol and were three times mo re likely to have experienced physical and/or sexual violence during p regnancy. When logistic regression procedures were used to simultaneou sly examine the relative impact of all of the variables on treatment u tilization, the four strongest independent predictors positively assoc iated with treatment utilization were the women's race (being African- American), the women's use of illegal drugs during pregnancy, the wome n's past treatment for substance abuse, and the women's use of cigaret tes before pregnancy.