Premium
Association Between Lifetime Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Past Year Alcohol Use Disorder Among American Indians/Alaska Natives and Non‐Hispanic Whites
Author(s) -
Emerson Marc A.,
Moore Roland S.,
Caetano Raul
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
alcoholism: clinical and experimental research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 153
eISSN - 1530-0277
pISSN - 0145-6008
DOI - 10.1111/acer.13322
Subject(s) - alcohol use disorder , medicine , demography , logistic regression , odds ratio , depression (economics) , alcohol , psychiatry , biology , biochemistry , sociology , macroeconomics , economics
Background Posttraumatic stress disorder ( PTSD ) and alcohol use disorder disproportionately impact certain populations including American Indians/Alaska Natives ( AIAN ). While PTSD and alcohol use disorder have been studied both separately and in tandem, less is known about the association in AIAN . The objective was to examine the association between lifetime PTSD and past year alcohol use disorder among AIAN and non‐Hispanic Whites ( NHW ). Methods Data come from the 2012 to 2013 U.S. National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions‐ III . We used logistic regression to estimate odds of AUD among adults with and without PTSD by race. Results A total of 19,705 participants, of whom 511 were AIAN and 19,194 were NHW , were included in this study. The percentage of PTSD among AIAN was 22.9% ( n = 117) compared to 11.7% ( n = 2,251) in NHW ( p ‐value <0.0001). The percentage of past year alcohol use disorder among AIAN was 20.2% ( n = 103) compared to 14.2% ( n = 2,725) in NHW ( p ‐value <0.0001). The percentage of comorbid past year alcohol use disorder with lifetime PTSD among AIAN was 6.5% ( n = 33) compared to 2.4% ( n = 457) in NHW ( p ‐value <0.0001). Regarding the joint distribution of PTSD and AUD , AIAN men have greater than 3 times the percentage compared to NHW men (9.5% vs. 3.1%). When stratifying by race (after adjusting for age, sex, depression, and education), among AIAN , the odds of past year alcohol use disorder with (vs. without) lifetime PTSD were 1.76 (95% CI 1.07, 2.90) and among NHW , the odds were 1.59 (95% CI 1.41, 1.80). Conclusions PTSD is significantly associated with alcohol use disorder in the study populations. Despite a lack of pre‐ PTSD measures of alcohol use disorder, these findings show a trend indicating that AIAN exposed to PTSD are more burdened with alcohol use disorder compared to NHW in the general U.S. population.