Correlates of alcoholics anonymous affiliation among justice-involved women

BACKGROUND: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) constitutes a major public health problem and is associated with a substantial amount of disability and premature death worldwide. Several treatment and self-help options including Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings are available. Nevertheless, factors associated with AA affiliation in some disadvantaged groups such as justice-involved women are not well understood. The purpose of this study is to report on previously unexamined correlates of past year AA affiliation among women in pretrial jail detention. METHODS: The current study used cross-sectional data from 168 women with DSM-5 diagnosis of AUD in pretrial jail detention. The study examined factors related to women’s concept of self and others (i.e., disbelief that others are trustworthy, lack of autonomy to choose who they interact with, experience of violent victimization, low investment in self-care, higher stress levels, and homelessness) as correlates of past-year AA affiliation, controlling for severity of AUD and demographic factors. RESULTS: Women who believe that others are inherently trustworthy, women who met less AUD criteria, and women who are older reported more past-year AA affiliation in both univariate and multivariate analyses. CONCLUSION: Introducing AA outreach and alternative interventions for younger, less severely addicted women might improve AUD outcomes. Moreover, designing more individualized treatment plan for women who believe others are not trust worthy might help AUD treatment engagement in this population. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT01970293, 10/28/2013. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12905-018-0614-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.