Good afternoon. My name is Jimmy Sawyer, and today I am thrilled to be presenting at a grad student forum. Before I begin, I want to thank the Graduate College as well as the committee members on the graduate student government who worked so hard to organize this event. No small feat. Today I will be presenting preliminary results from my dissertation. And I know we have a limited amount of time. So let me jump right in. The title of my presentation today is advancing the call for gender responsive recovery housing challenges facing women in Delaware sober living on. So I'm going to talk first about Thurber living will walk through a couple of key concepts that underlie this work. The first of which is ever-living home. Sober living homes are a long-term recovery treatment modality. They function as a bridge between intensive treatment and independent living. So for an example, think of someone who has just recently attended a 30 day rehab. They're coming out and your options are to transition back into the community that they entered with. Which more likely than not, is a community centered around drug using and perpetuating drug use. And so what we want is for that person to have a clean and safe place, to live, a place to promote their sobriety and a community that is centered around this writing. And so this is where sober living homes come into play. They function as a bridge. They provide a clean and sober living, space, social environment. The idea is that the Thurber living will allow a person to begin to accumulate what we call recovery capital in the substance use disorder and Recovery go to recovery capital are the personal and psychological resources that served promote long-term recovery. Example of recovery capital include financial security, housing security, social support, but not just any friends or family, but friends and family that are centered and committed to helping you sustain your sobriety and long-term recovery. So once someone has accumulative recovery capital and sober living homes, or the mechanism in which we're proposing that that happens. Then the idea is that recovery outcomes will be improved so that translate to, for example, a decrease in relapse. Relapse to the unexpected and normal thing to have happen in someone's recovery process. But with the support systems in place, we would anticipate a decrease in relapse, as well as the decrease in symptoms of psychopathology, addiction severity, and commitment. It's variety to an increase in commitment. Writing. So the goal of my dissertation specifically is to examine gender differences within recovery capital. So gender is a variable that has been recognized as an important predictor in both the literature that explores the development of, as well as recovery from substance use disorder. So key differences have been found between women and men as far as gender differences go. Yet it is an under it remains an under explored topic. In the recovery residences, sober living home. To the current study. I've worked on this study for three years. It is some work that I really, really care about and it's also serving as the foundation for my dissertation. I'm using the data that resulted in the study. My dissertation that I talk a little bit about a here. So my dissertation into secondary data analysis of data that's pulled from a longitudinal community-based study that examined whether and for whom Delaware sober living homes contribute to the promotion of long-term recovery and the prevention of relapse. So as you can see here, we partnered with to community-based organization that owns eight, collectively owned a total of eight homes in New Castle County. Our final sample was made up of 120 participant. And as you can see here, eight ever-living homes that we've visited on a monthly basis. So I covered this here. I'll talk little more about it. There were ten monthly surveys that we distributed over a two-year period, meaning there's a rolling admission that we did. We followed these people even after they moved out of the home. So we get we captured for data around that transition from recovery home into the community, which as we mentioned before, it's important that that recovery capital for different domains with recovery capital including financial security, housing security, financial income, mental health, as well as recovery specific outcomes. I talked about our final sample and he got 120. And then we also had suddenly three women. Women here is defined inclusively, meaning this includes trans women. And so the analogy that I'm run that far, our preliminary they are what I'm using to inform the models that I'm designing for the M1 of magnification. So that's firebrand descriptive and bivariate analysis. And I will talk about the teach us next slide. So here we have preliminary result, Iran from independent samples, t-test and the overall sample. And I have a graph here that mapped out those differences. And I'm going to start with depression. So this plus sign here next to the 10.7 thick. This indicate clinical significant, which means with a D there is a clinical cut-off score of 10. And so for the women, the mean score for overall for women was 10.76. Meaning on average, women are scoring at clinically significant levels of depression. Men are registering depression, but not so much that it's clinically significant. And isn't really the key outcome that's showing up. Not only overall but in other analyses, but I'm doing by month, I'm seeing significant differences and financial strain between women and men, where women are consistently experiencing more financial strain that men, both within the homes and when they move out. And if you think about it, this makes sense. You now in the general population, when we think about gender equity, income and salary, when they get pay versus what men get paid. It's widely known that women get paid less. So it makes then that, that women are facing, who are facing multiple challenges in life. Like a lot of these women are, are going to experience more financial strain, especially on average, these women reported having more children than the men in the sample. And so they have a lot of responsibilities. And I left up less economic opportunity daily. And so we're seeing that show up here. And to that, one of the key implications of this, where are you now pertains to gender equity, not only gender health equity, but off the gender equity in general. Though one of the real world takeaways of this is that now it's sort of returns back to the strength of the study, which is that we partnered with community-based organizations. And so any findings that we discover, we are able to take those directly back to our stakeholders and future directions go very much short-term goal at this point. As I said, either preliminary analysis. So my next steps are typically the primary analogies which include multiple group latent growth curve, which will establish a trajectory across each of the variables that I showed you before. And then estimates from the trajectories are going to then be used in a random forest model, where I will determine the relative important of gender compared to these other variables. Some of the how, how much gender matters basically. And finally, I plan to write a report and to share it with stakeholders with the purchase them. So I now may appreciate their time, but I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have during Q and a. Thanks so much.

Advancing the call for gender-responsive recovery housing: A data-driven discussion of treatment challenges facing women in Delaware, USA sober living homes , Ginnie Sawyer-Morris

From Lauren Mosesso April 13, 2021

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Background
Substance-free recovery housing has emerged as a promising long-term treatment modality for substance use disorder; and while gender has proven an important predictive factor in other treatment contexts, it remains understudied in this arena. Compared to men, women are more likely to enter treatment with more complex diagnoses (e.g., co-occurring disorders) after fewer years of use and with more problems related to family, employment, and physical health. This study contributes novel evidence to the field by examining gender differences of recovery capital predictors and outcomes in a community-based sample of Delaware recovery home residents.

Methods
Participants included 120 individuals (73 women) residing in recovery homes who consented to complete 10 monthly surveys assessing demographics, mental health, and recovery outcomes. Descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses were used to explore gender differences in residents’ demographics, mental health, and economic wellbeing.

Results
Preliminary results suggest that women were more likely to have children, ꭓ2 (1, N = 120) = 9.63, p < .01; reported more lifetime psychiatric disorder diagnoses (women, M = 2.71; men, M = 1.64; t(118.00) = -4.64, p < .001); and, over the 10-month period, averaged higher levels of depression (women, M = 10.76; men, M = 8.65; t(652.36) = -3.87, p < .001), perceived stress (women, M = 6.40; men, M = 5.61; t(685.47) = -3.40, p < .001), and financial strain (women, M = 14.46; men, M = 10.71; t(670.38) = -7.51, p < .001).

Conclusion
These results contribute to a growing evidence base suggesting that women and men enter treatment facing different challenges and their process of recovery continues to look different over the long-term. Thus, it may be important to consider gender-responsive programming in recovery housing contexts as one way to meet gender-specific needs and strengths that women bring to recovery settings.

Department Name: Human Development & Family Sciences
Appears In: GSG presents 10th Annual Graduate Students’ Forum

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