Female prisoners more likely to report opioid use, receive treatment

Key takeaways:

• In prisons, women were more likely to report opioid use and have opioid use disorder compared with men.
• Women were more likely to receive treatment upon intake.

SAN FRANCISCO — Among prisoners, women were more likely to have opioid use disorder and more likely to receive treatment at intake compared with men, according to a poster presented here.

“The main finding that was the most shocking to us was the disparity between men and women with opioid use,” Ambriale Davis, MPH, a third-year medical student at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told Healio at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting.

Davis and colleagues randomly selected 507 charts among 1,841 patients seen for psychiatric treatment at a county correctional facility in December 2020, according to the poster. The researchers analyzed demographic and opioid use information from intake health screening and psychiatry clinical documentation.

Overall, 67.3% of the study sample were men and 12.4% had opioid use disorder (OUD), 52.4% of whom were men and 47.6% of whom were women. The prevalence of OUD was higher among women compared with men (18.1% vs. 9.7%; P < .01). They were also more likely to report opioid use upon intake (18.1% vs. 7.3%; P < .01), as well as more likely to receive withdrawal treatment at intake (12% vs. 2.9%; P < .001).

“When we looked at the numbers, it's about 66% of females who ended up getting withdrawal treatment out of the people who do have the disorder and it's about 33% for males,” Davis told Healio. “So, [the question is] are women using more or do they have more extreme symptoms?”

Future research should elucidate why women have a greater need for opioid withdrawal treatment when in prison, Davis said.