Current Issues

Adolescent substance abuse is an emerging health issue in the population that has negative implications on physical health, psychological well-being, academic achievement, and social performance. Educational interventions are important in enhancing awareness and positive attitude towards substance use prevention. The following study was intended to determine the efficiency of an organized teaching programme on knowledge and attitude toward substance abuse in adolescent boys of a selected institute in Cuddalore district. The design taken was a one-group pretest-posttest quantitative quasi experimental. The convenience sampling method was applied to select a group of 81 participants. The knowledge questionnaire and an attitude scale were used to gather the data in a semi-structured manner. The pretest results have shown that most of the participants possessed poor knowledge and negative attitude towards substance abuse. The results showed a significant increase in the knowledge and attitude scores after the educational intervention with most of the participants exhibiting sufficient knowledge and favorable attitude. The pretest and posttest knowledge scores had a statistically significant difference. The research findings lead to the conclusion that structured educational initiatives are effective in increasing the level of awareness and positive attitudes to substance abuse prevention among adolescents.