Prevalence of substance use among students of government and private medical colleges

Abstract

This research aims to assess the prevalence of substance use among students of private and government medical colleges of Punjab, Pakistan. An exploratory research design and multistage stratified proportionate sampling technique was used to conduct the cross-sectional study. A demographics sheet, DAST-10, AUDIT-10 and DSM-5 Level2- Substance use- Adult was used for data collection. Of the total target population of 2908, 798 (27%) medical students participated. Overall, 128(16%) were found to be vulnerable and among them 9.7% were diagnosed to substance use. The higher usage was reported by males (63.2%) than females (36.8) with statistically significant difference (Z=-4.46, p<0.05). Diagnosed participants used pain killers 59.2% mostly. It indicated that different types of substance use was significantly correlated with academic year (rₛ= 0.46, p< 0.05) and family’s monthly income (rₛ= 0.15, p<0.05) of participants. The point prevalence of drug and alcohol addiction among diagnosed participants came out to be 30.7% and 12.8% respectively.