FRIDAY, Jan. 5, 2007 (HealthDay News) -- Hispanics and blacks with alcohol problems are less likely than whites to seek help, a new study finds.
For the study, published in the January issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, researchers analyzed data from the most recent U.S. National Alcohol Surveys (1995, 2000). They tracked how whites, blacks and Hispanics with alcohol problems differed in their use of services for alcohol problems.
"National surveys suggest that, on the whole, only a fraction of Americans with alcohol abuse or dependence -- between nine and 16 percent -- have obtained treatment for their problems," study lead author Laura Schmidt, assistant professor of health policy in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a prepared statement. "However, researchers have been at odds about the degree to which minority problem drinkers are underserved."
"Once we began teasing apart the underlying relationship between factors that affect treatment use, significant ethnic differences began to emerge," Schmidt said.
The researchers found that Hispanics had higher rates of alcohol problems than either blacks or whites. And Hispanics and blacks with more severe alcohol problems utilized alcohol services at lower rates than whites with similar problems.
Certain barriers may have affected the likelihood of seeking services.
"We found some evidence that financial and logistical problems -- such as not knowing how to find services, lacking means to pay and being unable to obtain child care -- have kept Hispanics from seeking help for an alcohol problem when they had considered going," said Schmidt.
"As a nation, we need to be concerned about making services for alcohol problems equally available to all people," she said. "We should be particularly concerned that Hispanics and blacks with higher-severity alcohol problems receive the care that they need."
More information
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more about alcohol abuse and alcoholism.
