Readiness for treatment: Predictors of drug abuse help-seeking in Mexican American, African American and white San Antonio arrestees

Abstract

This research explores the relationship between sociodemographic characteristics, drug use, drug related activities, high risk behavior and feelings of substance dependency with readiness for treatment among Mexican American, African American and white arrestees. The sample (N=688) was drawn from the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) arrestees in San Antonio, Texas who tested positive for heroin or cocaine and admitted using these drugs sometime in their life. Analysis based on a series of step-wise forward regressions identified the most significant predictors and odds ratios for wanting treatment for each ethnic group. The results indicate that each ethnic group presented a distinct pattern predicting help-seeking behavior ranging from a highly complicated one for Mexican Americans to a less complicated model for African Americans. The strongest predictors for Mexican Americans are feelings dependent on heroin and on marijuana (more than doubling the odds). Being divorced, injecting cocaine and feeling dependent on alcohol and having illegal income and spending $200 or more on drugs a week also increased the odds of seeking treatment. For African Americans using heroin everyday tripled the odds, while money spent on drugs and not having full-time employment were also strong predictors of readiness for treatment. For whites feeling dependent on alcohol tripled the odds of help seeking, while using heroin every day, injecting cocaine and money spent on drugs doubled the odds of readiness for treatment. The implications are that a more creative attention to the specific complexes of sociological and social psychological variables associated with ethnic groups would lead to progress both in scientific theory construction and the planning of prevention interventions in these groups.