Clients In Treatment, 1992

• Across the nation, an estimated 945 thousand clients were in specialty substance abuse treatment on September 30, 1992. This amounts to 432 clients per 100,000 in the general population, age 12 and older.
• This census of clients is an estimate, for 1992, of the number of clients who were in specialized treatment in one time. Out of the much larger population who abused alcohol and illicit drugs that year [see SAMHSA, 1994b], these people were getting help to reduce their own substance abuse. Their efforts and the resulting reduction in substance abuse benefits society by lowering the economic and social costs of abuse.
• This estimate of the daily client population, in conjunction with information about specialty treatment process, can be used to estimate the scope of treatment operations and the economic resources employed. That is, it can be used to estimate the professional staff and the space required to deliver specialized services day-to-day. NDATUS also collects limited funding and staffing data from treatment providers that will be presented in the forthcoming Main Findings report.

The number of clients per 100,000 people, ages 12 and older, varies across the nation. These differences may reflect a number of factors, including the number of people who abuse substances, clients' ability to pay, availability of private insurance and public funding for substance abuse treatment, social mores, cultural values, and criminal justice sanctions that impose substance abuse treatment on substance abusers who are arrested or convicted. These differences may also reflect State reporting practices. The NDATUS results presented below simply compare different parts of the nation in terms of the scale and scope of substance abuse treatment services. They do not attempt to explain differences.

• The number of clients in specialty treatment per 100,000 population, age 12 and older, varied among the 4 census regions. The highest rate of specialty treatment clients was in the West (656 per 100,000 population), followed by the Northeast (539). The Midwest (361) was well below the national average, and the South had the lowest rate (293).
• The variation among the States was greater than among census regions. Washington State had the highest estimated rate (781 clients per 100,000 population), with Rhode Island next (754). On the other extreme, 8 States had less than 200 clients per 100,000 population.

See Table 3 in Appendix 7 for data.

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