Prevalence of Substance Use among Undergraduate Students in a Medical College of Nepal

Abstract

Introduction: The consumption of substances is a common practice among the medical students and their use might reduce educational and clinical performances as well as judgment of the students. This study aims to find out the prevalence of substance use among medical students in BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences.
 Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among medical students of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences from 15th September 15th to December 15th 2018 after obtaining ethical approval from the Institutional Review Committee (Ref: 1394/017). The study was conducted among 326 medical and dental students from first to fifth year by using the stratified sampling method. A self-reported questionnaire was developed which included types, frequency, duration, age to first use, and motives for the use of different substances. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 11.5.
 Results: The prevalence of substance use among medical students of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences was 196 (61.4%) at 95% Confidence Interval (56.05-66.75%). Among substance use, the use of alcohol 190 (59.6%), tobacco 90 (28.2%), and marijuana 38 (11.9%) was more prevalent. One hundred forty four (45.2%) male students used more substances as compared to 52 (16.3%) female students. Fun sake or partying 131 (68.9%) was the main motivation of the students to use substances. 
 Conclusions: The overall substance use among medical students was high compared to other studies. Alcohol was the most common substance misused by the student followed by tobacco and marijuana. Proper counseling and awareness programs about the potential risk of substances are recommended for the betterment of the students.

Investigating the association of quality of life and addiction in students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences.

“…The results of the study show that the tendency to addiction was different between male and female students; and male students were more likely to abuse drugs, which was consistent with the results of studies of their kind (31)(32)(33)(34)(35), Explaining that entering a new educational environment and having different social and educational expectations from female and male students in the university environment, causes them to experience different issues in the educational environment and therefore There was a difference in the quality of life between the two groups.…”

“…In this study, most of the participants were single and there was no relationship between marital status and substance abuse tendency, but domestic research shows that single people are more exposed to substance abuse than married people (29,30). However, some studies show that the rate of substance abuse in married people is higher than single (31).…”

Substance use behavior and its lifestyle-related risk factors in Bangladeshi high school-going adolescents: An exploratory study

“…For example, a previous Bangladeshi study observes similar findings for smoking and gul (powdered tobacco, habitual use is common in South-east Asia) usage (42.2% and 2.2% vs. 2.3% and 1.5%, respectively), although chewing tobacco is higher in female participants (21.6% vs. 19.4%) [31]. Similarly, male participants used more substances than females in Nepal [28] and Ethiopia [30]. Students of arts and commerce backgrounds were reported to have higher substance use behaviors.…”

“…The same study also identified that 34.3% of the adolescents reported using any of the substances sometimes during their lifetime [27]. To this end, it can be noted that the diversity of substance use in a particular cohort (medical students, for instance) can vary across the cultures, used methodology, and other factors [28][29][30]. Therefore, cross-cultural studies are needed to provide a better understanding of substance use across countries.…”

“…Prevalence of substance use may increase due to several factors such as higher availability of the substances [17], peer influence [13,33], more pocket money, being influenced by seeing other's engagement [16], for fun or partying [28], and family negligence [32]. Adolescent substance use behavior is also influenced by the average grade level, truancy, and religious involvement [34].…”