Adolescents often experience their addictive experiences hidden from parents. Treatment begins when problems arise that adolescents cannt solve it alone.

To asses correlation between duration of silence about heroin addiction experience and certain epidemiological data collected with the Pompidou form.

The authors analyzed the group of 77 heroin addicts aged 26.4 ± 5.6 years, who were treated at the Department of Psychiatry Tuzla in the period 2006–2009 year. Pompidou standardized form was used for collecting the necessary data.

We found that the heroin addicts began to take the first drug of 17.2 ± 3.9 years, parents were informed about it 2.8 ± 1.3 years later. The duration of silence was positively associated with age of addicts (ρ = 0515, P > 0.001), length of addictive experience (ρ = 0463, P < 0.001), parent's divorce (ρ = 0432, P < 0.001), previous conflict with law (ρ = 0255, P = 0.028), powerty in the family (ρ = 0236, P = 0.045) and previous treatment (ρ = 0354, P = 0.002). On the other hand, it was negatively associated with living in community with other addicts (ρ = -0 363, P = 0.001), intravenous heroin use (ρ = -0 345, P = 0.003), detected hepatitis B (ρ = -0 262, P = 0.002), owning their own children (ρ = -0.280, P = 0.016) and with years of completed education of father (ρ = -0 245, P = 0.008) and of mother (ρ = -0 246, P = 0.036).

Silence about heroin addiction was positively associated with age of addicts, duration of addiction, parent's divorce, with trouble with law, with poverty in family, and previous treatment. Silence is negatively associated with living with other addicts, intravenous use, hepatitis B, owning children, and more years of parent's completed education.