Children at Risk Because of Parental Substance Abuse

Research has documented that children with substance-abusing parents are more at risk than their peers for alcohol and drug use, delinquency and depression, as well as poor school performance. Therefore, good population estimates of the number of such children are critically important. Two previous studies using data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) found that a nonnegligible percentage of parents report illicit drug use and show a need for drug abuse treatment. However, most studies on children of drug abusers were conducted using clinical or student samples and thus do not provide national estimates of the number of children living with substance-abusing parents. This report takes advantage of nationally representative data from the 1996 NHSDA to obtain estimates of the number of children potentially affected by parental substance use and abuse.

Children at Risk Because of Parental Substance Abuse