The Relationship between Physical Abuse, Sexual Victimization, and Adolescent Illicit Drug Use

Researchers have typically relied on clinically or legally involved persons to assess the influence of childhood maltreatment on illicit drug use, limiting the generalizability of findings. A few studies have sampled from the general population to explore this relationship, although these studies tended to focus on a particular type of maltreatment (sexual assault vs. physical abuse vs. neglect). The present study attempted to elucidate the role of various measures of maltreatment, namely sexual victimization, physical abuse, and the co-occurrence of both types of abuse, in adolescent illicit drug use and age of onset of drug use. Using a sample of Mexican-American and non-Hispanic White adolescents, the current research addressed (1) whether the three measures of abuse were related to self-reported measures of illicit drug use, (2) the relative effects of the three measures of abuse on illicit drug use, and (3) whether, among drug users, the three measures of abuse were related to self-reported age of onset of illicit drug use. Findings indicated that physical abuse and sexual victimization, as well as the co-occurrence of both, were significantly associated with frequency of various types of illicit drug use, but that among drug users, no measure was a particularly robust predictor of mean age of onset of drug use. Results also suggested that physical abuse was generally more strongly related to illicit drug use than sexual victimization or the co-occurrence of both. implications of these findings for future research are discussed.