Perhaps the most informative data on conduct disorder and substance dependence in American Indians has been published by Kunitz and colleagues (1998, 1999a,b). In a study of the Navajo they reported that the prevalence of CD was 22.2% in men and 12.3% in women and the prevalence of alcohol dependence was 70% among men and 29% among women. (Kunitz et al., 1999a). They also reported that CD was not simply a risk factor for alcohol dependence but also for more extreme forms of alcohol- and non-alcohol related problems (Kunitz et al., 1999a). Risk factors for CD in that population were: histories of physical and sexual abuse in childhood; abusive maternal drinking, a small number of households per camp; younger age; and being male (Henderson et al., 1998; Kunitz et al., 1999b). They further speculate that the decline of the livestock economy and the development of a cash economy, and the movement from multiple household camps to agency and border towns causing the disruption of the network of obligations to kin, may have resulted in social structural risk factors for excessive drinking (Kunitz and Levy, 1994) and other externalizing disorders.
