Dramatic gender shift in heroin users

THERE has been a dramatic shift in the gender of young heroin users — most are now teenage girls and are likely to be involved in a relationship with a male heroin user.

Adolescent child psychiatrist, Dr Bobby Smyth, said 17 of the 19 teenagers attending the Drug Treatment Centre in Trinity Court, Dublin, over the last 12 months are female.

He also found that 60% of the girls were in a relationship with a heroin user who was more likely to be older than her and responsible for her drug use initiation.

He wondered if heroin was being used by girls as a form of self harm instead of cutting or binge eating.

He found they were more damaged psychologically. They would have more difficulty in controlling emotions and would display more features of borderline personality disorder.

Addressing a conference organised by the Irish Psychiatric Association in Dublin, Dr Smyth said the gender difference among young heroin users contrasted with the adult treatment programme, where the ratio between male and females was three to one.

He found there had been a gradual shift in the gender profile of young users from the early 1990s when girls accounted for 30% rising to about 45% by 1999.

He said the girls were entering treatment as quickly as the boys so the figures gave a good barometer of the gender shift of the drug problem.

Asked if the girls were being pushed into prostitution and were being given heroin or were taking it voluntarily, Dr Smyth said this was not the case.

"No, the prostitution issue happens the other way round. They end up on heroin and then drift into prostitution. A lot of these kids come from deprived communities but just really drifted in a rather thoughtless way into using heroin."

He said the average age for accessing treatment at the centre was 17 years while the average age of first using an illicit drug was 12 years and most had used alcohol before that.

Most had used heroin two years before seeking treatment.

More than half had a history of injecting.

"It is not as if these kids were just dabbling, they were using three and a half bags of heroin a day."

Dr Smyth also found a strong family history of substance abuse alcohol abuse in the parents and opium abuse in the siblings. On-in-seven had a parent who was an opium user.

Half had been intermittently homeless and 20% were homeless when they presented for treatment. They also had substantial contacts with social welfare during childhood.

He said it was not heroin use that caused the teenagers to leave school early. Generally, it was the case that heroin use followed on from their departure from school.

Dr Smyth was surprised to discover that more than half had seen a psychiatrist and 13% had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, sometimes after an overdose. One-in-three had spent time in prison where they were either serving a sentence or on remand.