A profile of alcohol and drug clients in New Zealand: results from the 1998 national telephone survey.
OBJECTIVE
To describe the profile of clients seen across the broad spectrum of dedicated alcohol and drug treatment services in New Zealand.


METHODS
217 randomly selected alcohol and drug treatment workers in New Zealand were interviewed by telephone, yielding a randomly selected sample of 291 clients. Workers were asked to identify the age, gender, ethnicity, main substance use problem and geographical location of clients.


RESULTS
60% of clients were male, 28% were Maori, the mean age was 31 years and the largest group of clients were seen for alcohol related issues (45%), followed by cannabis (27%) and opioids (17%). None of these variables differed significantly across residential/non-residential services. Significant trends to emerge were: that Maori clients were more likely to live rurally and to be in treatment for cannabis use, women were more likely to be in treatment for benzodiazepine use and less likely for cannabis use, opioid users were more likely to be seen at Crown Health Enterprise funded services, and cannabis users were (on average) younger than other clients, while alcohol users were older.


CONCLUSIONS
Alcohol and drug treatment services are dominated by clients seeking assistance with alcohol and cannabis use problems. Women are not under-represented in this population. Maori are over-represented. This contrasts with the absence of Asian clients and an under-representation of Pacific Island clients. There are some significant variations in the types of drugs used by different demographic treatment seeking populations. In contrast, client differences across treatment settings are minimal.
Adamson
S J
SJ
National Centre for Treatment Development, Alcohol, Drugs & Addiction, Department of Psychological Medicine, Christchurch School of Medicine.
Sellman
J D
JD
Futterman-Collier
A
A
Huriwai
T
T
Deering
D
D
Todd
F
F
Robertson
P
P
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000453:epidemiology; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D002189:Marijuana Abuse / Q000453:epidemiology; D009520:New Zealand / Q000453:epidemiology; D016320:Substance Abuse Treatment Centers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*