Unveiling the Nexus of Addiction, Violence, and Risk: Generational Patterns in Female Populations

Introduction: During these last years, there has been a growing literature highlighting the potential relationship between suffering and perpetrating violence and risky behaviours (psychoactive substance use, gambling). Literature pointed out that among the adult female population the suffered violence plays a crucial role in the association with psychoactive substance use and gambling. Conversely, among younger females, it was observed the vice versa pattern.  This study aim to better understand the inverse pattern regarding the association between violent experiences - suffered or perpetrated - and risky behaviours among adult and young female populations. 

Data and Methods: Data were collected through the IPSAD®2022 and ESPAD®Italia 2023 surveys, cross-sectional studies conducted among the Italian representative adult (18-84; n=2,746) and student (15-19; n=5,974) population. To define risk profiles related to addictions, standardized questionnaires were used. Among adults, problematic alcohol use and gambling were assessed respectively via PGSI and CAGE. tests. Instead, among younger, CAST and SOGS-RA tests were used to assess problematic cannabis use and gambling. Following a stepwise procedure, Multinomial Logistic regression models were performed to analyse the associations between substance use, gambling, and violent experiences. The relative risk ratio provided by the model was used to argue the obtained results. 

Results: Adult women who have experienced physical and/or psychological violence during their lifetime triple the risk of becoming at-risk gamblers or using alcohol in a problematic way. However, no significant association with perpetrated violence has been observed. Among younger women, an opposite pattern is observed, whereby engaging in physical violence is strongly associated with problematic cannabis use or at-risk gambling, with a risk increase of 6 and 8 times, respectively. Furthermore, being a cyberbully triples the risk for both problematic cannabis use and gambling. In contrast, unlike the adult female population, no association with suffered violence has been observed.

Discussion: The results confirm a strong relationship between substance use and other behavioral addictions and violent experiences. However, the analysis presents very interesting suggestions regarding the different violent patterns observed between the adult and young female populations. In particular, it would be significant to understand if women who suffer violence today were those who acted violently during adolescence or if we are witnessing a true anthropological generational mutation.

Conclusions: Considering that substance use and gambling could be regarded as coping strategies to deal with the stressful feelings relating to violent experiences, there is a need to promote focused and targeted policies for females to develop effective prevention programs able to contrast the phenomenon.