Schifano Fabrizio
University of Hertfordshire, Pharmacy and Postgraduate Medical Schools, Hatfield, UK.
Curr Opin Psychiatry. 2008 Jul;21(4):391-7. doi: 10.1097/YCO.0b013e328303e2b7.
More than half of the world's population is living in urban areas, but the evidence about urban-rural differences in drug use is not clearly defined. The present paper aims to review the international literature addressing the role of urbanization and related parameters in association with substance misuse. In particular, the evidence of urbanization being a risk factor for substance misuse is examined.
Although it has been suggested that substance misuse is typically a characteristic of large urban areas, this did not appear to be a consistent observation from the literature review. Furthermore, the urban context may offer a relative proximity of health services and prompter emergency intervention in case of overdose.
Although more efforts have to be put into explaining substance misuse in general, identifying which characteristics of the urban context are modifiable, and under what circumstances, is an important theoretical, empirical, and public health question.
全球半数以上人口居住在城市地区，但关于药物使用城乡差异的证据尚不明确。本文旨在综述探讨城市化及相关因素在物质滥用中作用的国际文献。特别要考察城市化作为物质滥用风险因素的证据。
尽管有人认为物质滥用通常是大城市地区的特征，但文献综述结果显示这并非一致的观察结论。此外，城市环境可能使医疗服务相对更近，且在过量用药时能更快进行紧急干预。
尽管总体上还需付出更多努力来解释物质滥用问题，但确定城市环境的哪些特征是可改变的，以及在何种情况下可改变，是一个重要的理论、实证和公共卫生问题。
