Assessing Related Factors on the Illicit Use of Medications in Abbas Abad City(mazandaran): A Cross Sectional Study

Self-treatment is a one of the main inevitableproblems in remedy cycle. In Iran, self treatment is so common that h-as caused the exessive use of drugs in the country.Therefore, this study aimed at dete-rming the influencial factors on self-trea-tment in the boarding clinic of Abasabad city (Mazandaran province). This is a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out in 2013 and 300 individuals refering to the Abas-abad’s clinic were selected randomly. Data was collected by a questionnaire as well as interviews and then the Chi-square test was used to analyze the data. Results of data analysis showed a significant relationship between the varia-bles of age, gender, education and occup-ation of people under study andeach of the questionaires’ items about the probable reasons of headstrong use of medicine and the selection of injection form (p value <0.05). We evaluated the relationship of exessive medicine use with matrimory sta-tus, gender, the effect of education and a-ccuption of people under study. It was found that self treatment is used by 204 men compared to 96 women, 176 married as compured to 124 singles, 137 preuniv-ersity level compared to 82 granduates. In our study, the major common of exessive use of drugs were easy availability of drugs from drugstors without prescription (98%), available drugs at home or getting from others (96.7%), lack of awareness on the dr-ugs’ complications (72.7%), and give little atttention to diseases by the individual (72.7%). Discussion & In order to incr-ease individuals awareness and perform-ance, especial educational programms sho-uld be designed and presented to people via various educational methods and proc-edures. Self-treatment is itself neither good nor bad. Policy makers should do interv-entions in both micro and macro levels to decrease inappropriateuse of medicines. The interventions include: Restrictingeasy access to medicines especially harmful and dangrous medicines; Instruction on how to use and maintain medicine to patient by physician and pharmacist; General training of society for rational use of medicines and limiting the number and type of medicines stored at home; Elevation the quality of sanitary and treatment services and incr-easing the access of society to service pres-entation system. The above mentioned are very helpful in our study for decreasing obtained preferences regarding the obstinate use of medicines.