The Effect of Inmate Populations on Estimates of DSM-IV Alcohol and Drug Use Disorders in the United States

To The Editor: Most national estimates of adult DSM-IV substance use disorder (e.g., National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions [1], and National Survey on Drug Use and Health [2]) are based on household samples that exclude prison and jail inmates, populations known to have high rates of substance use disorders.To estimate the effect of excluding inmates, we present estimates of alcohol and drug use disorders for household and inmate populations and calculate the change in the overall prevalence of substance use disorder when these two populations are pooled.The authors report no financial relationships with commercial interests.