wledge and Attitudes among Governmental Secondary Schools Students Regarding Substance Abuse — Elfasher city — Northern Darfur State

Abstract

Abstract Background: Substance abuse continues to be major risk behavior, accompanied with physical and /or mental health complications/consequences among the younger generation, and in particular among students is an epidemic form that has been causing great public concern. Aims: the aims of this study were to assess the knowledge and attitude among governmental secondary schools students regarding substance abuse in elfashir city —northern Darfur state. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional school base study design was carried out among boys governmental secondary schools which selected randomly 8 secondary schools in alfashir city, northern Darfur state, the sample size was 384, stratified random sample was used to distribute the sample according to number of students in each selected schools , the data about knowledge and attitude were collected by used questionnaire which contained 22 questions, data were analyzes by statistical package for social science, version 21, and presentation in figures and tables. Results: general level of knowledge about substance abuse was found good (78.5%) and positive attitude toward substance abuse (60%). There is significant association between the students‘ knowledge and education level of parents. Students abused drugs most of them abused cigarette smoke (18.5%), (9.9%) used sniffing, (4.2%) used kharsha, (4.2%) used alcohol, (3.4%) used amphetamine, (2.6%) used cannabis. Source of abused drugs mainly from friends (78.l0%). There was significant association between parents abused substance and attitude toward imitated by their children. And there was significant association between family income and students abused cigarette smoke. Conclusion and recommendation: The majority of participant's had good knowledge about substance abuse and it is effects, the attitudes showed positives most, users had cigarette smoke. School health program should be more active to build awareness to secondary schools students about substance abuse.