Question
Is there a correlation between trauma and substance use disorder?
Answer
There's a significant correlation between trauma and substance use disorder. An extremely high percentage, as many as 90% of the people who have a substance use disorder, have some sort of trauma and may even have some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Substance use is considered a primary disease in itself, although most people especially with trauma, found that substance use was a solution to their emotional turmoil from the trauma that ultimately became a problem.
In addition, People who have experienced trauma, especially during childhood when the brain is developing, their brain develops in such a way that it may even predispose them more so to developing some sort of a substance use disorder. So, those things quite frequently, go hand in hand.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, Co-Occurring Substance Use and Mental Disorders: Best Practices and Evidence-Based Treatments, presented by John Smith, PhD, LCSW.
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