Regular Research ArticlesThe Epidemiology of Alcohol Use Disorders and Subthreshold Dependence in a Middle-Aged and Elderly Community Sample
Section snippets
Sample
This study is drawn from the public-use files of the 2005–2007 NSDUH,19., 20., 21. an annual survey providing population estimates of substance use and health status of the civilian, noninstitutionalized population aged 12 years or older in the United States. Its sampling frame covers approximately 98% of the total U.S. population aged 12 years or older, and uses multistage area probability sampling methods to select a representative sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population
Prevalence of AUDs among All Adult Respondents
As shown in Table 1, of all adults aged 50 years or older (N = 16,304), 9.3% reported some DSM-IV AUD symptoms in the past year (dependence: 1.4%; abuse: 1.7%; subthreshold dependence: 6.3%). Adults aged 50–64 years had a higher prevalence of AUDs than those aged 65 years or older (4.2% versus 1.5%), and men had a higher prevalence than women (5.0% versus 1.4%). In addition, subthreshold dependence was found in 8.4% of men, 4.4% of women, 7.0% the 50–64 age group, and 5.2% of the older than 65
DISCUSSION
Overall, 59% of male respondents and 44% of female respondents reported alcohol use during the past year. Approximately 6% of past-year alcohol users aged ≥50 years had an AUD, and AUDs were more frequent in respondents aged 50–64 and among men. Symptoms of tolerance (requiring more alcohol to get “high”) and time spent (a lot of time spent in activities necessary to use or recover from alcohol's effects) were the most frequent AUD symptoms. This national study also identified several subsets
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The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive provided the public use data files for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which was sponsored by the Office of Applied Studies of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The authors thank Amanda McMillan for her editorial assistance.
This work was supported by research grants from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health (R01DA019623, R01DA019901, R21DA027503 to Li-Tzy Wu), a contract for the Data and Statistics Center for the Clinical Trials Network of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (HSN271200522071C to Dan G. Blazer), and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of Duke University Medical Center. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors, not of any sponsoring agency.