Associação entre consumo de drogas e aspectos sociais e de saúde em adolescentes escolares

Abstract

In contemporary societies, drug consumption has become a social and health problem related to political, cultural and economic issues. This usage may occur in any stage of someone’s life and for varying reasons. However, the beginning of the use can lead to or enhance their state of social and health vulnerability. This present study aims to: Analyse the prevalence of drug consumption among school teenagers and its association with sexual and sociodemographic variables; and to identify the association among drug abuse, social and health problems of school teenagers. It is a transversal study, born from a project called: “The University and public schools: looking for strategies to deal with factors that interfere with the learning/teaching process”, implemented in a state public school in a poorer neighborhood from the city of Salvador, Bahia. The study population is formed by 239 teenagers who frequented the afternoon classes. The data acquisition was made through a questionnaire, from October 2014 to January 2015. The drug use was taken as a dependent variable whilst the social demographic characteristics as well as the sexual health and absolute densities of social and health problems were considered independent variables. The data were processed with the Stata software, version 12, and later analyzed by the calculation of frequencies – both absolute and relative – for the many categorized variables and also by the measure of central tendencies and dispersion for continuous variables. The association was identified through the rate prevalence calculation and the Mann-Whitney Test, both with significance level of 5%. For the multivariate analysis, it was performed a stepwise backward logistic regression with the variables which showed p-value < 0.2 in the bivariate association. The original project was submitted to the Research Ethical Committee of UFBA’s Nursing School and then approved (Document nº 384.208/2013). The prevalence of teenagers who had used drugs in the last month was of 25.92%. There was a statistical association between this drug use variable and religion (RP=1.88 e IC95%=1.03 – 3.41), school year (RP=2.0 e IC95%=1.03 – 3.85), work (RP=3.68 e IC95%=1.08 – 12.54) and sexual activity (RP=3.75 e IC95%=2.05 – 6.87). I was identified in the last model associations between school related problems, relationship issues with friends and drug consumption, whereas with drug use there was 4% more change of developing problems with these aforementioned areas in teenagers who reported drug use (OR=1.04). The data revealed high prevalence of drug consumption in school teenagers and its relation to low-level of schooling, absence of religious practice, early start in work and sexual activity as well as the occurrence of relationships or school related problems. It is highlighted the strengthening and readjustment of the health in schools program as a possibility for diminishing the prevalence of drug use and intensity of its problems in the teenage population.