Blog Report

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

New Inhalant Abuse Report from SAMHSA

The Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) just released a new National Survey on Drug Use & Health (NSDUH) Report.

The report is entitled," Inhalant Abuse and Major Depressive Episode Among Youth Aged 12 to 17: 2004-2006. "The 2006 NSDUH Report surveys youth 12-17 years old to assess “co-occurrence of inhalant use and Major Depressive Episode (MDE) in the past year.”

Some of the findings include:

Inhalant Use:
  • Past year inhalant use was almost 4 times higher among persons aged 12 to 17 than among young adults aged 18 to 25 (1.3 vs. 0.4 percent).
  • In 2004 to 2006, 1.1 million youths aged 12 to 17 (4.5 percent) used inhalants in the past year
  • Females in this age range were more likely than males to use inhalants in the past year (4.8 vs. 4.2 percent)
  • Youth aged 14 or 15 (5.3 percent) were more likely than youths aged 12 or 13 (4.3 percent) & those aged 16 or 17 (3.9 percent) to have used inhalants in the past year.

Inhalant Abuse & Major Depressive Episode (MDE)

  • The rate of past year inhalant use was higher among youths aged 12 to 17 who had MDE in the past year than among those who did not (10.2 vs. 4.0 percent)
  • Males with past year MDE were about twice as likely as those without past year MDE to have used inhalants (9.6 vs. 4.0 percent)
  • Females with past year MDE were about 3 times as likely as those without past year MDE to have used inhalants (10.5 vs. 3.9 percent)
  • In each age group, youths with past year MDE were more likely than youths without past year MDE to have used an inhalant in the past year.

Which comes first: MDE or Inhalant Abuse:

  • An estimated 218,000 (.9 percent) youths aged 12 to 17 used inhalants and experienced MDE in the past year.
  • 43.1 percent experienced their first episode of MDE before initiating inhalant use.
  • 28.3 percent used inhalants before they experienced their first episode of MDE
  • 28.5 percent started using inhalants and experienced their first episode of MDE at about the same time.

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