ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on women’s substance abuse problems and treatment issues in the context of Finnish society and its welfare service system. When considering addiction problems, women are seen as more vulnerable than are men. In terms of vulnerability, women’s substance abuse should not be conceptualised within an individualised framework because drug abuse cuts across social divisions and is shaped by social, structural and cultural contexts, including social and health care services. It is thus important to understand and examine women’s substance abuse problems and treatment connected with vulnerability by tracing social, structural and cultural determinants combined with them. The social framework for understanding these questions comprise here the psychosocial dimensions of women’s substance abuse, socially produced shame in women, challenges of the welfare service system and its ideology, and issues of societal integration and social suffering.
