Knowledge on effects of substance abuse among adolescents: - A descriptive study

Abuse of substances creates a great threat to the health, social and economic condition of individual, family, community and to the nation. In the past two decades’ abuse of substances is an important public health concern among people, especially among adolescents. The major aims of the study were to determine the knowledge on the effects of substance abuse and to find the association between the level of knowledge scores on the effects of substance abuse among adolescents and selected demographic characteristics.Govt. PU College, Halayangadi, Dakshina Kannada District was the setting and 360 samples were selected by multistage random sampling technique. Data was collected by administering the structured knowledge questionnaire (r=0.82)with 30 items.Majority 180(50%) of the adolescents had average knowledge and least 27 (7.5%) had poor knowledge. The mean knowledge score was 24.87±6.435, with a mean percentage of (50.75%) revealing that the overall knowledge of the adolescents regarding effects of substance abuse was good. The study found out that there was no significant association between demographic characteristics and knowledge of the samplesat the significance level of 0.05.The study concluded that there is a need of motivational classes to prevent substance abuse in adolescence.