Comparison of psychiatric inpatient male and female adolescent drug abusers.

Drug-abusing male and female adolescent psychiatric inpatients were compared on a variety of etiological, environmental, and social variables. Results indicated that the frequency, duration, and pattern of abuse did not differ significantly for males and females. Factor analyses, however, revealed that for females, drug abuse and pathology in general were associated with family related variables; for males, patient abuse and patient pathology emerged as factors orthogonal to family drug abuse and family pathology. These findings indicate that female pathology is more reactive to the family situation and hence they raise the hypothesis that when the female separates from the family her pathology will decrease more than the pathology of the male who separates.