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Risk and protective factors for substance use among Iranian university students: a national study

BACKGROUND: Substance use is a major mental health concern among university students. It may result in behavioral and academic problems, psychiatric disorders, and infectious diseases. Thus, this study investigated the risk and protective factors of substance use among Iranian university students. M...

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Autores principales: Taremian, Farhad, Yaghubi, Hamid, Pairavi, Hamid, Hosseini, Seyed Ruhollah, Zafar, Masoud, Moloodi, Reza
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282323/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30522495
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-018-0181-2
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author Taremian, Farhad
Yaghubi, Hamid
Pairavi, Hamid
Hosseini, Seyed Ruhollah
Zafar, Masoud
Moloodi, Reza
author_facet Taremian, Farhad
Yaghubi, Hamid
Pairavi, Hamid
Hosseini, Seyed Ruhollah
Zafar, Masoud
Moloodi, Reza
author_sort Taremian, Farhad
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Substance use is a major mental health concern among university students. It may result in behavioral and academic problems, psychiatric disorders, and infectious diseases. Thus, this study investigated the risk and protective factors of substance use among Iranian university students. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study. A number of 7330 students were selected from 30 universities in Iran. The participants completed a researcher-designed questionnaire. It measured life time, previous year and previous month’s substance use, demographic characteristics, and a body of risk and protective factors including, religious beliefs, self-esteem, stress and psychological pressure, sensation seeking, attention seeking, anger and aggression, depression and anxiety, parents’ positive attitude towards substance use, lack of intimacy between family members, plus substance use, smoking cigarettes or hookah, alcohol consumption, and prescribed medications use by their family members, easy access to illegal drugs, peers’ positive attitude towards substance use, peers’ drug use, perceived prevalence of substance use among students, and negative attitude toward university. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: Participants’ anger and aggression, depression and anxiety, participants’ positive attitude towards substances, low level of religious beliefs, peers and family member’s substance use, and parent’s positive attitude towards substance significantly and strongly predicted using cigarette/hookah, alcohol, hard drugs, and prescribed medications. Having a negative attitude toward university significantly predicted using all types of substance (except for prescribed medications). Low self-esteem predicted using cigarette/hookah, and alcohol use. Perceived availability of illegal drugs predicted hard drugs and prescribed medications’ consumption. Finally, peers’ positive attitude toward drugs anticipated cigarette/hookah use. CONCLUSION: Prevention programs are most needed among Iranian students. They should be comprehensive in nature and focus on students’ psychoeducation about substances and their related negative consequences, plus promotion of students’ life skills, and integrate family- and peer-based preventive interventions.
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spelling pubmed-62823232018-12-10 Risk and protective factors for substance use among Iranian university students: a national study Taremian, Farhad Yaghubi, Hamid Pairavi, Hamid Hosseini, Seyed Ruhollah Zafar, Masoud Moloodi, Reza Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy Research BACKGROUND: Substance use is a major mental health concern among university students. It may result in behavioral and academic problems, psychiatric disorders, and infectious diseases. Thus, this study investigated the risk and protective factors of substance use among Iranian university students. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study. A number of 7330 students were selected from 30 universities in Iran. The participants completed a researcher-designed questionnaire. It measured life time, previous year and previous month’s substance use, demographic characteristics, and a body of risk and protective factors including, religious beliefs, self-esteem, stress and psychological pressure, sensation seeking, attention seeking, anger and aggression, depression and anxiety, parents’ positive attitude towards substance use, lack of intimacy between family members, plus substance use, smoking cigarettes or hookah, alcohol consumption, and prescribed medications use by their family members, easy access to illegal drugs, peers’ positive attitude towards substance use, peers’ drug use, perceived prevalence of substance use among students, and negative attitude toward university. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: Participants’ anger and aggression, depression and anxiety, participants’ positive attitude towards substances, low level of religious beliefs, peers and family member’s substance use, and parent’s positive attitude towards substance significantly and strongly predicted using cigarette/hookah, alcohol, hard drugs, and prescribed medications. Having a negative attitude toward university significantly predicted using all types of substance (except for prescribed medications). Low self-esteem predicted using cigarette/hookah, and alcohol use. Perceived availability of illegal drugs predicted hard drugs and prescribed medications’ consumption. Finally, peers’ positive attitude toward drugs anticipated cigarette/hookah use. CONCLUSION: Prevention programs are most needed among Iranian students. They should be comprehensive in nature and focus on students’ psychoeducation about substances and their related negative consequences, plus promotion of students’ life skills, and integrate family- and peer-based preventive interventions. BioMed Central 2018-12-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6282323/ /pubmed/30522495 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-018-0181-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Taremian, Farhad
Yaghubi, Hamid
Pairavi, Hamid
Hosseini, Seyed Ruhollah
Zafar, Masoud
Moloodi, Reza
Risk and protective factors for substance use among Iranian university students: a national study
title Risk and protective factors for substance use among Iranian university students: a national study
title_full Risk and protective factors for substance use among Iranian university students: a national study
title_fullStr Risk and protective factors for substance use among Iranian university students: a national study
title_full_unstemmed Risk and protective factors for substance use among Iranian university students: a national study
title_short Risk and protective factors for substance use among Iranian university students: a national study
title_sort risk and protective factors for substance use among iranian university students: a national study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6282323/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30522495
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13011-018-0181-2
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