Research Issues in Prevention

Substance abuse has consistently been shown to precede, cause, correlate with, exacerbate, or be a consequence of nearly every major mental health, physical health, behavioral, and psychosocial problem. Psychological correlates include cognitive deficits, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, paranoid feelings, and delirium. Physical health correlates are numerous and include, among others, cancer, stroke, and heart disease. Individuals who misuse substances are at a substantially greater risk of having employment difficulties and relationship problems. Further, substance abuse is associated with increased rates of suicide and all forms of interpersonal violence. From an economic standpoint, substance abuse is estimated to cost U.S. society about $160 billion per year in health care costs. When other costs of substance abuse are expanded to include crime and lost work productivity, ...