Vision and hearing loss associated with lifetime drug use: NHANES 2013-2018

One in four American adults has a disability. Individuals with disabilities are more likely to have mental health issues and use substances and are less likely to attend substance use rehabilitation compared to individuals without disabilities. However, most research about substance use and substance use rehabilitation does not focus specifically on sensory disabilities.

The purpose was to test the association between vision and/or hearing loss, lifetime drug use, and lifetime drug rehabilitation.

Data files from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey cycles (2013-2014, 2015-2016, 2017-2018) were combined. Ordinal logistic regression was used to test the association between vision and hearing loss and lifetime drug use and binary logistic regression to test the association with lifetime rehabilitation among those who had used drugs, adjusting for multiple testing and the complex survey design.

There was a significant association between vision and hearing loss status and lifetime drug use (p = .018), but not with lifetime rehabilitation (p = .972). Post-hoc comparisons were not statistically significant. However, individuals with vision loss only and hearing loss only had 36% and 37% greater odds, respectively, of drug use than those without a disability, and those with both vision and hearing loss had 18% greater odds of drug use than those with either alone.

Persons with disability were more likely to have used drugs but were not more likely to have gone to drug rehabilitation.