Characteristics of clients entering women-only substance use treatment services in New South Wales

Background: Women experiencing substance use disorders face barriers to treatment, including childcare, stigma and lack of gender/trauma-informed programming. Several non-government organizations in New South Wales run women-only treatment services to address these needs. Objectives: We aim to assess characteristics of women entering treatment in these services. Design: Data on client characteristics from six women-only non-government organization substance use disorder treatment services in New South Wales between 2014 and 2018 were extracted from a database containing demographics, drug use and treatment characteristics and psychological distress (Kessler-10 scale) of women entering the services. Logistic regression models were used to estimate unadjusted odds ratio and adjusted odds ratio for treatment completion and different drugs on entry. Results: Data were available for 1357 women. Most (91%) episodes were for residential treatment. Women’s mean age was 35.4 years (standard deviation = 9.8; range = 17–67). Residential clients tended to be younger than non-residential clients (35.1 vs 38.5 years, p