Substance abuse leads to child, other abuses

OGDEN — Drug abuse is not only strongly linked to child abuse, its effects get passed on and compounded with every generation if left unchecked, a national expert on substance abuse told a statewide audience of abuse treatment providers.

Speaking to the 24th annual fall conference on substance abuse meeting in Ogden this week, Anna Marsh, deputy director for the U.S. Health and Human Services Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, said the cycle usually surfaces with alcohol and drug abuse factoring into 50 percent to 75 percent of child neglect and abuse cases.

In cases of child sexual abuse, alcohol or some other drug is involved in more than 80 percent of the cases, Marsh said, adding that a study by the 3rd District Court in Utah last year showed that 60 percent of abuse cases involve drug abuse by a parent.

But substance abuse has been rippling through a child's life long before child protection or police have intervened, Marsh said. Parents who abuse alcohol and other drugs discipline children less well as a rule, they don't attend to their children's emotional needs and overreact with harsh discipline that often turns into abuse, she said.

The tragic pattern then gets passed down: Not only are substance-abusing parents poor role models, children who have been abused, particularly those who have been sexually abused, more often than not turn to abusing substances to help them deal with their past abuse.

"Substance abuse ignites an intergenerational fire," Marsh said. "The abused often become the abusers and it repeats one generation to the next."

National studies by Marsh's center show that 8.3 million children are living with a parent who is either dependent on alcohol or needs treatment for illicit drugs. That translates to 11 percent of children under age 15, or about three children per school classroom.

When an abuse situation becomes so bad that children are taken into state custody, trauma for the child becomes acute, she said. But as traumatic as removing a child can be, "it's better for a child to see a parent in recovery than to be with the parent who is abusing," Marsh said. "That is the only way we can turn abuse into healing and an abusing family into a place for sustenance and growth."

Abusing parents are a big contributor to the dramatic increase in the use of methamphetamine among teenage girls in Utah, said Michelle Wilcox, a drug treatment counselor with the state Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health.