Psychosocial and health aspects of drug use by students in public secondary schools in Nairobi, Kenya.
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Date
2009-03Author
Ndetei David M.
Khasakhala, LI
Mutiso, V
Ongecha-Owuor, FA
Kokonya, DA
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of family, psychosocial, health, demographic, and behavioral characteristics on regular drug use. All the students of 17 randomly stratified public secondary schools in Nairobi were required to complete self-administered sociodemographic and the Drug Use Screening Inventory-Revised (DUSI-R) questionnaires in a cross-sectional descriptive study. All the 1328 students, of whom 58.9% were male, responded to all the questions, giving a response rate of 100%. The mean age of the respondents was 16 years and 78.1% were in boarding school. One third (33.9%) scored positively for substance abuse. Significant correlations were found between several domains of substance abuse and school, class, mode of school attendance, age, and gender. Students abusing drugs have multiple comorbidity of medical, psychological, and social pathologies. There are evidence-based intervention entry points for drug abuse that go beyond mere impartation on knowledge about the harmful effects of drugs.
URI
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19197782http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/17428
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08897070802606410#.UmYhlhD16m0
Citation
Subst Abus. 2009 Jan-Mar;30(1):61-8.Publisher
Africa Mental Health Foundation, Nairobi, Kenya Department of Psychiatry, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya;
Collections
- Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) [10377]