Sex and Age Differences in Prevalence of Psychiatric Conditions Comorbid With Substance Use Disorders Among Military Veterans

AIM: Comorbid substance use disorders (SUDs) and mental health (MH) conditions pose unique challenges to veterans' functioning, quality of life, and treatment. METHODS: We characterize comorbidity between SUDs and MH conditions using a sample of 6,872,103 patients enrolled in VA health care. We queried the effect of MH conditions on comorbidity, compared sex and age groups, and characterized the impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI) using logistic regressions. RESULTS: Certain MH conditions are at higher risk of SUDs. There was a small but significant effect of sex and age wherein males and younger veterans were generally more likely to have a comorbid SUD. Those with TBI and TBI plus posttraumatic stress disorder had 1.80 increased odds of having an SUD. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, results suggest that comorbid SUDs are highly prevalent among veterans with MH conditions, with some important variability in risk between subgroups that should be taken into account when developing treatment plans and novel interventions.