Prevalence and Causes of Substance Abuse Among Undergraduate Medical College Students.
Article
in En
| IMSEAR
| ID: sea-157639
ABSTRACT
Increasing substance abuse and its impact on physical and psychosocial health is a worldwide public health concern. Adolescence is the period when initiation of these habits usually takes place. During adolescence students are more vulnerable due to increased academic pressure, peer group influence and increased popularity and availability of substances. Understanding the pattern and circumstances leading to substance abuse will help to go for appropriate interventions to protect the young adults from substance abuse. Aims and Objectives:
To find out the prevalence and causes of substance abuse among undergraduate students of three medical colleges of Bhubaneswar. Materials andmethods:
All the undergraduate students of the three colleges present on the day of survey (1188) were included in the study; data was collected using a pre-tested structured questionnaire. Compilation and analysis of data was done subsequently using proportion and chi square test as statistical test.Results:
Prevalence of substance abuse was found to be 45.87% with a male (74.03%). Predominance. Cigarette (72%) was found to be the most common substance of abused followed by alcohol (68%), gutkha (24%) and drugs (23%) Staying in hostel, non-satisfactory intra- familial relationship favoured substance abuse. Curiosity about the substance, academic and peer pressure, family problems were the major initiating factors.Conclusion:
Continuing use of these substances in spite of knowledge of hazards associated with them reflected lack of health consciousness and need of proper health education .So, proper counselling with well planned policies should be implemented to root out the evil of substance abuse among the future doctors which will help in providing better health care services to the people.Key words
Full text:
1
Index:
IMSEAR
Main subject:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Prevalence
/
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Substance-Related Disorders
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Counseling
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Education, Medical, Undergraduate
/
Young Adult
Type of study:
Etiology_studies
/
Prevalence_studies
/
Qualitative_research
/
Risk_factors_studies
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
En
Year:
2014
Type:
Article