Causative Factors of Substance Abuse Among Adolescent Secondary School Students in Aba: Counselling Implications

This study examined the causative factors of substance abuse among secondary school students in Aba, Abia State. Two research questions were answered, and two null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. A sample of 120 students was purposively drawn from four randomly selected secondary schools in Aba which were noted for prevalence of substance abuse. 70 males and 50 females participated in this study, 65 of them were from high socio-economic background, while 55 were from low socio-economic status background. Their age range is between 15-19 years and their mean age was 16.12 years. The Drug Habit Scale (DHS) which has a test-retest reliability of 0.73 and a construct validity of 0.70 was used for data collection. The t-test statistic was used to test the two hypotheses at .05 level of significance. The result indicated that male and female students take drugs for different reasons. The result also showed that high or low socioeconomic status is not a determining factor of substance abuse. Some counselling implications of these findings were discussed and, the study recommended among others that drug users should be rehabilitated after treatment so as to avoid relapse.