Patterns of Substance Abuse among University Students in Ondo State Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined patterns of substance abuse among University students in Ondo State.The specific objectives were to identify the substances abused among University students in Ondo State; and levels of substances abuse between great abuser of drugs in Ondo State Universities. The study adopted descriptive cross-sectional design. The population of the study are both male and female undergraduate students in Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) and Achiever University Owo Ondo State. Yemane’s formula was used to calculate the sample size because the population was finite and over 10,000. The sample size was 424 students while multi stage sampling procedure was used. The study obtained data through semi-structured questionnaire. In order to ascertain the validity of the instrument, the instrument was presented to two research experts in the field of mental health for face and content validity. To ensure the reliability of this instrument, test re-test form of reliability was used. The questionnaires retrieved were coded and analyzed using both descriptive statistics. Unknown soaked local alcoholic herbs (67%), beer (86%), alcohol (62%), cigarette (68%), shisha (73%), were mostly used by the students. The findings of the study revealed that 12.3% of the respondents have high level of substance abuse, over a quarter (26.2%) were moderately into use of substances, while majority (61.5%) never abused substances. The implication is that, 12.3% is the prevalence of substance abuse among the respondents. The study concluded that, the level of substance abuse is low, however significant enough to raise a concern among the population under study. It was recommended among others that school management across tertiary institution in Nigeria need to make rules that will prohibit substance abuse within the campus.