Prevalência do uso de sustâncias psicoativas entre adolescentes e adultos jovens de uma escola pública do interior da Paraíba.

Abstract

The consumption of psychoactive substances among adolescents from different social classes has been growing steadily in Brazil and in the world, regardless of age, gender and education level. It is in this stage of life that many habits and behaviors are established and can be transferred to adulthood, thus becoming more difficult to change. The objective of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of psychoactive substances by adolescents and young adults from a state school in the interior of Paraíba. This study was an exploratory and analytical research with a quantitative approach. As the prevalence of substance use among 638 adolescents and young adults, there was a total of 27.8% students to use. The predominant use of these substances among students was statistically significant for the variables of gender, education and family income. This use was found to be predominant in males (56.1%), also prevalent in students of the 1st year of high school (62.7%) and students with family income up to one minimum wage (35.7%). It was also observed that the alcoholic beverage was the substance most prevalently consumed among students compared with other drugs (tobacco, marijuana and crack) with a prevalence of 91.0%. Then with a prevalence of 14.6% of the use of both genders, is the cigarette after him, marijuana with 12.3% and finally the crack with a low prevalence of 1.1% in the use. Excluding the crack, the consumption of all drugs is predominant in males. Most students reported using drugs rarely referring to the use of reason a sense of well being. Conceptualizing the situation of the prevalence of psychoactive substances, it is observed that the scenario of adolescents and young adults of that educational institution, is not too alarming when compared to other studies of national literature, but should not be ruled out the fact perform actions education in this population in order to minimize the tragic effects caused by the use of these substances.