Evaluation of Drug Abuse Preventive Behaviors Based on Health Belief Model (HBM) Among Male High School Students in Boroujen City, Iran

Drug addictionis a knownpublicandsocialhealthproblemof this century.Recent studies haveshownthatyoung peoplehavelittleresistanceagainstdrugs, buthave theability tounderstandandaccept the risks of drug use.Theaim of thisstudyis todetermine thepreventive behaviorsofdrug addictionamongstudentsbased onthe healthbelief model. This is a descriptive-analytical studyon 224 high school students from four boys’ high schoolsof Boroujen city. Sampling in this study was multistage random. The study of demographic variables andstructuresbased onhealth belief modelvariables (perceived benefits, perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, perceived barriers, self-efficacy and cues to action) toward drug abuse prevention functions were used. The data were analyzed by SPSS software anddescriptive and inferentialtests. The findings of this study showedthat, there aresignificantpositive correlationsbetween theScoresof preventivebehaviorsand thecomponents in thehealth belief modelofdrugabuseinthestudents. Moreover, there was significant correlationbetween the parent’seducationand their obtainedknowledgerelated tofactors with substance abuse prevention(P=0.001), and betweenthe methodof expressingtheirproblems andpreventive behaviorsofdrug abuse (P=0.002). The findings of this study, like other similar studies showed that awareness of relatedfactorsofpreventionofaddiction and the scoreof thehealthbelief modelconstructs in the students can significantly affect their preventive actions.