A retrospective analysis of substance use among female psychiatric patients in Saudi Arabia

Objective This study investigated the prevalence of substance use (SU), and its risk factors, among women attending psychiatric outpatients center in Saudi Arabia. Design A retrospective cross-sectional design. Materials and methods We reviewed outpatients’ records of 200 female patients with a hist...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Frontiers in psychology Vol. 13; p. 843785
Main Authors:	Alodhayani, Abdulaziz A., Almutairi, Khalid M., Vinluan, Jason M., Alonazi, Wadi B., Alzahrani, Hatim Gormallah, Batais, Mohammed Ali, Kaki, Fatmah Mohammed, Almigbal, Turky H., Alsaad, Saad
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A 22-08-2022
Subjects:	drug abuse female psychiatric patients Psychology retrospective study Saudi Arabia
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Summary:	Objective This study investigated the prevalence of substance use (SU), and its risk factors, among women attending psychiatric outpatients center in Saudi Arabia. Design A retrospective cross-sectional design. Materials and methods We reviewed outpatients’ records of 200 female patients with a history of SU from a psychiatric unit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia from December 2018 to February 2019. The researchers developed the pro forma , and 2 psychiatrists and a family medicine physician validated the form. Results The most common and widely used were psychoactive substances (58%), followed by central nervous system (CNS) depressants (22%), and finally cannabinols (9.5%). Overall, the highest substance use was the amphetamine-cannabis-nicotine (ACN) representing nearly half of the illicit items (46.6%), followed by heroine-alcohol-benzodiazepine (16.4%), and with the lowest being benzodiazepine-nicotine (1.7%). There was a significant difference between the single substance and multiple substance use in terms of age ( p = 0.001), smoking behavior ( p = 0.001), patients past history ( p = 0.005), and age of the patient at the start of drug use ( p = 0.005). Conclusion Although the prevalence of substance use among women is low in Saudi Arabia, screening of substance use disorders risks and building a rehabilitation program to control drug dependence are needed.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Edited by: Paolo Deluca, King’s College London, United Kingdom Reviewed by: Ilaria Riboldi, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy; Hassan Abduljabbar, Dr. Erfan & Bagedo General Hospital, Saudi Arabia This article was submitted to Gender, Sex and Sexualities, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
ISSN:	1664-1078 1664-1078
DOI:	10.3389/fpsyg.2022.843785