Key Takeaways
Extended Takeaways
- Among 2,050 hospitalized adults coded for social isolation, substance use clustered most strongly in younger adults: patients aged 19 to 44 years made up 57.4% of the substance use group versus 41.8% of those without substance use.
- Mental health comorbidity patterns differed within socially isolated patients: bipolar disorder was more prevalent with substance abuse (23.5% vs 16.4%), as was anxiety disorder (55.9% vs 45.3%), which may help identify higher-risk inpatients who need broader psychiatric assessment.
- Sex differences were consistent across every substance category among socially isolated patients, with higher prevalence in males for smoking (56.6% vs 40.1%), alcohol use disorder (16.7% vs 11.5%), cannabis use disorder (19.3% vs 8.8%), stimulant use disorder (19.7% vs 12.1%), and opioid-related disorders (18.0% vs 14.8%).
- Race-stratified results showed particularly high substance burden among black patients with social isolation, including smoking (63.9%), cannabis use disorder (27.9%), and stimulant use disorder (24.6%), while alcohol abuse was similar across black, white, and Hispanic groups (15.2% vs 14.8% vs 12.5%).
- Compared with patients without social isolation, hospitalized patients with social isolation had markedly higher prevalence of smoking (49.3% vs 36.1%), alcohol abuse (14.4% vs 4.9%), and cannabis use disorder (14.6% vs 1.4%), supporting routine substance use screening when social isolation is documented.
- Length of stay was similar among socially isolated patients by substance use status, but hospitalization cost was higher in those with substance use, suggesting that utilization burden may not be captured by days hospitalized alone.
