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Nearly 19 Million Children May Be Living With a Parent With SUD

About one-quarter of children in the United States may be living in a household where one or more parents have a substance use disorder (SUD), according to a research letterpublished today in JAMA Pediatrics. This number includes about 6 million children who may be living with a parent with an SUD and comorbid mental illness.

“Children in such households are more likely to develop adverse health outcomes than their peers without exposure to parental SUD,” wrote Sean Esteban McCabe, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan, and colleagues. “These findings signal the need for more attention at the federal, state, and local levels on the children and families affected by addiction.”

McCabe and colleagues calculated national estimates of children (anyone under 18) exposed to parental SUDs using data from the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health—which included DSM-5–based questions related to SUD. They found that nearly 19 million children lived with a parent who met DSM-5 criteria for past-year SUD. Of this total, around 11.3 million children had a parent with mild SUD, while 7.6 million had a parent with moderate to severe SUD. Further, around 3.4 million children were estimated to live with a parent with multiple SUDs.

The most common parental SUD was alcohol use disorder, which affected more than 12 million children, followed distantly by cannabis use disorder and then prescription medication use disorder (encompassing prescription opioids, benzodiazepines, sedatives, tranquilizers, and stimulants).

For related information, see the American Journal of Psychiatry article “Pattern of Risks for Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders in the Offspring of Parents With Alcohol Use Disorder.”

Source: https://alert.psychnews.org