Impact of adolescent exposure to intimate partner violence on substance use in early adulthood

Youth exposure to intimate partner violence has been theorized to increase the risk of adverse outcomes in adulthood including substance-use problems. However, the limited research on the association between early exposure to intimate partner violence and later alcohol- or drug-use problems is inconclusive. Using a prospective design, this study investigates whether adolescent exposure to intimate partner violence increases the risk for problem substance use in early adulthood and whether this relationship differs by gender.

The study uses a subsample (n = 508) of participants from the Rochester Youth Development Study, a longitudinal study of urban, largely minority adolescents that oversampled youth at high risk for antisocial behavior and drug use. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess whether adolescent exposure to intimate partner violence predicted increased odds of four indicators of problem substance use in early adulthood, controlling for parental substance use, adolescent maltreatment, and sociodemographic risk factors.

Exposure to severe intimate partner violence as an adolescent significantly increased the odds of alcohol-use problems in early adulthood for young women (odds ratio = 5.63, p < .05) but not for young men. Exposure to intimate partner violence did not increase the odds of other substance-use indicators for either gender.

Girls exposed to intimate partner violence may be at increased risk for problems with alcohol use in adulthood and should be a target for prevention and intervention efforts. Overall, however, the association between exposure to intimate partner violence and later substance-use problems is less than anticipated in this high-risk community sample.