Abstract

MUNOZ-GARCIA, Adriana Noemí  and  ARELLANEZ-HERNANDEZ, Jorge Luis. Psychosocial stress, coping and drug abuse in adolescents. Rev. de psicol. y cienc. del comport. de la Unidad Académica de Cienc. Juríd. y Sociales [online]. 2015, vol.6, n.2, pp.1-20. ISSN 2007-1833.

The objective of this study was to compare the occurrence and intensity of psychosocial stress and coping strategies used by a group of illicit drug user’s students with another group of non-drug users, and to identify the presence of predictive factors associated to substance consumption (psychosocial stress, coping strategies and demographic characteristics such as age and sex). A cross-sectional, correlational study was conducted, with an ex post facto design using quantitative methodology. A questionnaire was applied to 334 students of a public middle school. The substances of most commonly used were alcohol and tobacco; however, 9.3% of students had consumed illicit drugs at least once in their lifetimes. 97.7% of non-users of illicit drugs and 100% of drug users experienced at least one stressful event in the last year. The drug user group registered more stressful events in: personal, family, economic and health/accident areas. In the non-drug illicit user group, the area of social violence reported more occurrences, but less intensity compared to the drug user group. This last group showed more avoidance strategies for coping with stress (tobacco smoking and alcohol drinking). Two factors were identified as predictors of illicit drug use, age and tobacco smoking as coping strategy.

Keywords : stress; coping; risk factor; drug abuse; adolescent.

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