..in their view, rather than promoting wholeness and recovery, the experience recreated the secrecy of abuse and fed the stigma associated with each of the three issues." In the hopes of a more well-organized approach to providing these key services to women, the WELL project instituted a mechanism for promoting strategy and collaboration changes at the state, regional, and local levels. The WELL project also recommended an open dialogue between agencies as to better systems to put in place, and suggested giving individuals within each area of service "freedom to make change at any given moment" when a better approach can be taken by a trained professional healthcare provider.

Predominantly Female Caseloads: Identifying Organizational Correlates in Private Substance Abuse Treatment Centers, a piece in the Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research (Tinney, et al., 2004), speaks to the issue of the need for healthcare providers to be meeting "distinctive treatment needs" at the private substance abuse treatment centers. This is another research paper that points to the fact that women's needs have been neglected in the genre of health care for substance abuse.

A vitally important fact that has received "much less attention in investigations of women and treatment," the authors explain, is that "researchers have not adequately explored the organization attributes associated with treating higher percentages of women" in private facilities. This is unacceptable, the article continues, because the private sector "dominates the substance abuse treatment industry in number."

For example, in a National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services referenced by the article, it is pointed out that "the proportion of private not for profit (61%) and private for-profit (25%) facilities constitutes the majority of treatment facilities in the United States."

With the huge percentage of private drug dependence treatment facilities dwarfing those run by government at various levels, it seems highly appropriate that gender-specific programming should be investigated, and in this article, some results of those inquiries are available. First, since women generally rely more on government-subsidized insurance, and private facilities are less likely to provide those funds, women are at a disadvantage in private centers. Secondly, private facilities rely in many cases on "fee-for-service" payers, again putting women at a disadvantage. Thirdly, private centers can chose which groups, and genders, to market to, based on demands and trends, which is "perhaps to the detriment of minority groups, like women," the article continues.

This article's authors researched existing studies about care for women who are substance abusers seeking healthcare, and the writers found that "the majority of the studies examining treatment outcomes are individual-level analyses," and do not focus on the big picture, of looking at "the availability of women-sensitive programming." good fit for women in terms of a program for females needing treatment for substance abuse is identified in the article as one that offers four services: the presence of an active family program; one that offers child care services; a gender-specific treatment track; and treatment for psychiatric disorders aimed specifically at women. and, the article's research concludes, in terms of programs for women that had high success rates at the private facility level was "the presence of family-oriented components."

Prevalence and Motives for Illicit Use of Prescription Stimulants in an Undergraduate...

Also, 5.4% of the respondents indicate that they have used illicit prescription stimulants during the past year, but not for a lifetime.
Although men (9.3%) were more likely than women (7.2%) to report illicit use of prescription stimulants," the study asserted, "the authors found no gender differences in motives." And those motives were: "help with concentration"; increase "alertness"; and "to provide a high."

Validation of a System of Classifying Female Substance Abusers on the Basis of Personality and Motivational Risk Factors for Substance Abuse, is an article from the American Psychological Association's Web site, taken from Psychology of Addictive Behaviors (Conrod, et al., 2000); in the research the writers point out that "an anxiety-sensitive subtype" of woman showed "greater lifetime risk for "anxiolytic dependence, somatization disorder, and simple phobia." In contrast, an "introverted-hopeless subtype evidenced a greater lifetime risk for opioid dependence, social phobia, and panic and depressive disorders."

The "sensation-seeking" woman was associated in the research with "exclusive alcohol dependence," higher rates of antisocial personality disorder, and cocaine dependence.