DESIRE FOR HELP AMONG AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRUG-USERS

We examined demographic factors, drug-problem severity indicators, and social and personal resources of African-American drug users as corre lates of their self-reported desire for help with problems related to drug use. Avoiding the ''ethnic gloss'' of earlier research, we includ ed ethnicity-related attitudes, perceptions, and experiences among the factors tested. Findings suggested that interpersonal problem recogni tion was a key determinant of desire for help in this sample. Two addi tional factors associated with desire for help in multivariate analysi s were conventional moral beliefs and expected benefit of drug treatme nt We cite implications of these findings for patterns of help-seeking and recovery among treatment-naive African-American drug users.