Do US Adults View Drug and Alcohol Addiction as a Health Condition?

The current study aimed to estimate the percentage of US adults who disagree or do not know that addiction is a health condition and explore associations between disagreement that addiction is a health condition with indicators of beliefs about addiction treatment and intentions to support loved ones with addiction.

A nationally representative sample of US adults was recruited from Gallup's probability-based panel. A total of n=5250 (out of n=12,500 invited) responded to a web-based survey including questions about beliefs about drug or alcohol addiction and treatment. Survey sample weights were applied to correct for unequal selection probability and nonresponse rates, and data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression.

Close to one-quarter of US adults (23.0%) are estimated to either disagree or not know that addiction is a health condition. Respondents who disagreed or did not know that addiction is a health condition were less likely to believe that addiction is treatable by health care professionals (disagreed: OR=0.33, 95% CI=0.28-0.39; did not know: OR=0.28, 95% CI=0.21-0.36), early intervention for addiction is helpful (disagreed: OR=0.57, 95% CI=0.48-0.66; did not know: OR=0.40, 95% CI=0.31-0.53), or medications are effective treatments for addiction (disagreed: OR=0.47, 95% CI=0.40-0.55; did not know: OR=0.28, 95% CI=0.21-0.37). They were also less likely to indicate that they would help a loved one with addiction (disagreed: OR=0.50, 95% CI=0.40-0.63; did not know: OR=0.65, 95% CI=0.44-0.97).

US adults likely have heterogenous views on addiction, and more research is needed to further understand how US adults conceptualize addiction.