Relationship among gender, depression, and needle sharing in a sample of injection drug users

Abstract

The authors explored the relationships among gender, needle sharing, and depression in a sample of 392 male and 121 female street drug users. Using the Risk Behavior Assessment (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1991) and the Beck Depression Inventory-2 (A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996), the authors found that women reported higher levels of depression than men and that sharers endorsed higher levels of depression than nonsharers. Further, the authors found that female sharers reported the highest levels of depression of all groups, that is, as compared with male sharers, female nonsharers, and male nonsharers, who did not differ from one another. This suggests the presence of a special dynamic between gender and depression that is related to higher rates of needle sharing among women.