Statistical Analysis of Risk Factors of Drug Addiction of Youth in Debre Berhan Town, Ethiopia

Abstract

Drugs are damaging by their nature. These substances produce changes in behavior function by altering the chemistry of the brain. Once brain function is altered, a person experiences physical, psychological, and behavioral changes as a direct result. Changes in physical and psychological functioning cause damage to the mind, body, behavior and can harm the social relationships. According United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention report, the use of substances such as alcohol, khat, and tobacco has become one of the rising major public health and socioeconomic problem worldwide. The main objective of this study is to identify the risk factors for drug addiction of youth in debre berhan town. In general, this study is expected to be useful for the parents, the youth themselves, government, nongovernmental organization, and city administration in providing primary information and assist the concerned bodies to come up with appropriate intervention strategies that can help to curb the drug problem. The data is primary and cross-sectional. Descriptive statistics and the binary logistic regression analysis is applied to examine the association between the binary outcome dependent variable and explanatory variables. The binary logistic model revealed that the numbers of youth those are addicted in the age group 20-25 are much greater than from the youth those are addicted in the age group 15-19 and 25-30, youths with family members who use drugs are more likely to be drug addicts, and also those who are orthodox religion followers are more likely to be addicted than Muslim, protestant and other religion follower, additionally youth who are single are more drug user than married, divorced and widowed.