TRAINING COMMUNITY VOLUTEERS IN PREVENTING ALCOHOLISM AND DRUG ADDICTION : A BASIC PROGRAMME AND ITS IMPACT ON CERTAIN VARIABLES

A study was conducted on 19 community volunteers and the training module they underwent is presented. The subjects were given 7 days in-training with the objectives of imparting knowledge ana skill to identify and motivate alcohol and drug dependent person, to motivate them and their family to seek treatment to provide social support to them and to organise prevention programmes in the community. Their knowledge, skills and attitudes have shown significant improvement and change as a result to training. Extraversion was found to be significantly related to change in all the above variables, psychoticism was related to attitude and self-esteem was related to improvement in skills. Need for under taking further research in this area is also emphasized.