Prevalence and Causes of Substance Abuse Among Undergraduate Medical College Students.

Increasing substance abuse and its impact on physical and psychosocial health is a worldwide public health concern. Adolescence is the period when initiation of these habits usually takes place. During adolescence students are more vulnerable due to increased academic pressure, peer group influence and increased popularity and availability of substances. Understanding the pattern and circumstances leading to substance abuse will help to go for appropriate interventions to protect the young adults from substance abuse. Aims and Objectives: To find out the prevalence and causes of substance abuse among undergraduate students of three medical colleges of Bhubaneswar. Materials and methods: All the undergraduate students of the three colleges present on the day of survey (1188) were included in the study; data was collected using a pre-tested structured questionnaire. Compilation and analysis of data was done subsequently using proportion and chi square test as statistical test. Results: Prevalence of substance abuse was found to be 45.87% with a male (74.03%). Predominance. Cigarette (72%) was found to be the most common substance of abused followed by alcohol (68%), gutkha (24%) and drugs (23%) Staying in hostel, non-satisfactory intra- familial relationship favoured substance abuse. Curiosity about the substance, academic and peer pressure, family problems were the major initiating factors. Conclusion: Continuing use of these substances in spite of knowledge of hazards associated with them reflected lack of health consciousness and need of proper health education .So, proper counselling with well planned policies should be implemented to root out the evil of substance abuse among the future doctors which will help in providing better health care services to the people.

Effectiveness of Planned Teaching Programme on Reproductive Health Among Adolescent Girls.

Introduction: WHO defines adolescence as the period of life between 10-19 years. It is a period of rapid physical and biological changes, which may lead to confusion, tension, frustration, and feeling of insecurity.Adolescence is a prime time for health promotion and to encourage them to establish healthy patterns of behavior that will influence their development and health in later years. Adolescents are at high risk for nutritional morbidity. It is seen that adolescent groups have negative attitude towards balanced diet and it was found that they were not aware of nutritional requirement, personal hygiene, menstrual hygiene, etc. Feeling this need a planned teaching programme (PTP) was conducted on reproductive health education to enable an adolescent girl to develop skill, competencies and ability to deal with varied aspects of adolescence and to attain a safe motherhood in future. Objective: To assess the impact of planned teaching programme on family life education. Methodology: The study sample consisted of 144 adolescent girls of a high school in Ankuli, Berhampur. A structured questionnaire was used as a tool for data collection. Data was collected before and after planned teaching programme and it was analyzed using percentage and Wilcoxan paired sign rank test. Result: It was found that there was gain in knowledge in various aspects after conduction of PTP. Regarding nutrition the average score increased from 39.24% to 88.85% (before and after PTP respectively). Regarding knowledge of high risk behavior the score increased from 19.44 % to 82.87%. The knowledge on Anatomy and physiology of reproduction, AIDS and STD,reproductive health and personal hygiene etc also improved significantly after PTP. Conclusion: Imparting PTP on reproductive health among adolescent girls is quite effective if done in a well organized and scientific way.