Socio-Economic Status, Religious Attitudes, and Being Hopeful to Future as Predictors of Drug Abuse in Unemployed Youth

Addiction is one of the factors influencing human health. The trend of addiction in Iran shows that the number of addicted people is doubled every 12 years and increase by 8% each year. One of the risk factors of people tendency to addict is Joblessness. The aim of this study was comparison of socio-economic status, religious attitudes, and being hopeful to future between two groups of unemployed male youths: drug abusers and non-users. This case control study carried out in 2007. 200 unemployed young men (20 to 30 years of age) who had referred to four job centers in Isfahan were selected via cluster random sampling and divided into two groups: Group 1; those who had experience of drugs abuse during the first 6 months after unemployment (n=65) and Group 2; those who had not used any illicit drugs during this period (n=135). These groups were compared in terms of socio-economic status, religious attitudes, and being hopeful to future. Logistic regression model showed that drug abuse could be predicted by probability of having a pleasant life after 10 years (OR=‏0/985, CI:‏0/973-0/998, P=‏0/024, fasting (OR=‏0/985, CI:0/976-0/995 P=‏0/004), and avoiding illicit sexual relationship (OR=‏0/988, CI:‏0/977-0/998, P= 0/025). This study highlights the importance of probability of having a pleasant life after 10 years and some of religious attitudes (i.e. fasting and avoiding from illicit sexual relationship) on preventing from drug abuse in unemployed male youths. We suggest that policy makers take into account these results in preventive program planning.