Social stigmatization was a gender-specific barrier to treatment- seeking for AD and had a stronger effect among women. Our findings are in accord with results from other studies, which noted that women endorsed an increased fear of stigmatization (Beckman and Amaro, 1986) as a common obstacle to treatment. Although some gender-sensitive treatment programs have been developed in response to the characteristics, needs, and clinical course of AD (especially among women), results from these types of interventions have been mixed (Greenfield et al., 2007). Programs that simply changed treatment from mixed gender to women-only (but kept all other treatment-related variables the same) had little effect on changing substance use outcomes (Greenfield et al., 2007). On the other hand, programs were most effective when they responded to the special needs of substance abusing women, such as women who had children (Luthar and Suchman, 2000).
