The sample consisted of two subsamples of African–American participants recruited from the same geographic area that were pooled for this study. The first subsample consisted of 706 African–American patients (634 men, 72 women) recruited from the Substance Abuse Treatment Program (SATP) at the Department of Veteran Affairs New Jersey Healthcare System (VANJHCS), East Orange Campus. Nearly all were inpatients however a few were recruited from the SATP outpatient clinic or from the methadone clinic. Their mean (SD) age was 45.2 (7.9) years. Criteria for inclusion in the study were that patients were ≥18 years of age, met DSM-IV criteria for alcohol, cocaine, or opiate dependence, self-identified as African American and were abstinent. Exclusion criteria included mental retardation, dementia and acute psychosis. Patients were interviewed by a psychiatrist (AR) using the substance abuse section of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) (Spitzer et al., 1995) to establish lifetime substance dependence diagnoses. The diagnosis of suicide attempt was implemented by A.R. after interviewing the patient with a standard series of clinical questions and reviewing all available collateral information, e.g. from mental
