{"id":19266,"date":"2025-05-31T16:24:45","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T15:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=19266"},"modified":"2025-05-31T16:24:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T15:24:45","slug":"1-in-4-kids-lives-with-a-parent-battling-addiction-alarming-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2025\/05\/1-in-4-kids-lives-with-a-parent-battling-addiction-alarming-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"1 in 4 Kids Lives With a Parent Battling Addiction, Alarming Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Updated estimates indicate a greater need for treatment.<\/h3>\n

A new study reveals that a large number of American children are growing up in homes where at least one parent struggles with alcohol or drug use. This troubling environment may increase the chances that these children will face similar challenges later in life.<\/p>\n

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Using the latest available data from 2023, researchers estimate that 19 million children in the United States \u2014 that\u2019s one in four kids under the age of 18 \u2014 live with a parent or caregiver who has a substance use disorder.<\/p>\n

Even more concerning, around 6 million of these children are living in households where the adult also has a diagnosed mental illness along with their substance use disorder.<\/p>\n

Alcohol is the most commonly misused substance among parents. The data suggests that about 12 million parents meet the criteria for some form of alcohol use disorder. Cannabis use disorder follows, affecting over 6 million parents. Additionally, approximately 3.4 million parents are struggling with the use of multiple substances at once.<\/p>\n

Rising Numbers and Growing Concern<\/h4>\n

The number living with a parent who had any substance use disorder in 2023 is higher than the 17 million estimated in a paper\u00a0published just months ago\u00a0that used data from 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe increase and fact that one in four children now live with parental substance use disorder brings more urgency to the need to help connect parents to effective treatments, expand early intervention resources for children, and reduce the risk that children will go on to develop substance use issues of their own,\u201d said Sean Esteban McCabe, lead author of the new study and senior author of the recent one.<\/p>\n

The new findings are published in the journal\u00a0JAMA Pediatrics<\/em>\u00a0by a team from the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking, and Health, which McCabe directs. He is a professor in the U-M School of Nursing and Institute for Social Research, and a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.<\/p>\n

Both studies used data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a federal program that has tracked U.S. drug and alcohol use since the 1970s, yielding data that researchers and policymakers have used.<\/p>\n

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That survey faces an uncertain future due to staff and budget cuts at the federal agency where it\u2019s based, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA. The survey\u2019s entire staff received layoff notices in April.<\/p>\n

Drug Categories and Their Impact<\/h4>\n

In addition to alcohol and\u00a0cannabis<\/span>, McCabe and his colleagues estimate that just over 2 million children live with a parent who has a substance use disorder related to prescription drugs, and just over half a million live with a parent whose use of illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine meets criteria for a substance use disorder.<\/p>\n

The researchers include Vita McCabe, the director of University of Michigan Addiction Treatment Services in the Department of Psychiatry at Michigan Medicine, U-M\u2019s academic medical center.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that children raised in homes where adults have substance use issues are more likely to have adverse childhood experiences, to use alcohol and drugs earlier and more frequently, and to be diagnosed with mental health conditions of their own,\u201d said Vita McCabe, a board-certified in addiction medicine and psychiatry. \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s so important for parents to know that there is effective treatment available, including the medications naltrexone and\/or acamprosate for alcohol use disorder, cognitive behavioral therapy for cannabis use disorder, and buprenorphine or methadone for opioid use disorder including both prescription and non-prescription opioids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the new paper and the one published in March in the Journal of Addiction Medicine based diagnoses of substance use disorders and major mental health conditions on the criteria contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5, or DSM-5.<\/p>\n

In the March study, the authors showed that the change in how substance use disorder was defined in DSM-5 compared with its previous version led to a major increase in the number of children estimated to be living with a parent with a substance use issue.<\/p>\n

Ty Schepis, an addiction psychologist at Texas State University, was the lead author of the earlier paper and is senior author of the new paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur new findings add to the understanding of how many children are living with a parent who has a severe and comorbid substance use disorder and other mental illness such as major depression,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is important to note because of the additional risk that this creates for children as they grow into adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health<\/span>\u00a0(R01DA031160, R01DA043691).<\/div>\n
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Source: https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/1-in-4-kids-lives-with-a-parent-battling-addiction-alarming-study-finds\/<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Updated estimates indicate a greater need for treatment. A new study reveals that a large number of American children are growing up in homes where at least one parent struggles with alcohol or drug use. This troubling environment may increase the chances that these children will face similar challenges later in life. Using the latest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,129,41,120,46,36,19,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-addiction","category-culture","category-drug-use-effects-on-foetus","category-mental-health","category-parents","category-treatment-addiction","category-usa","category-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}