Attitudes of Palestinian Arab youth inside the green line toward experimentation with and regular use of psycho-active substances : perceptions and influencing factors

Abstract EN

The study investigated the attitudes of the Palestinian Arab adolescents in Israel concerning the risks involved in the experimentation with and regular use of psycho-active substances.

The aim of this study was to examine the adolescents’ attitudes toward the risk of experimenting and regularly using psychoactive substances together with the contribution of the family cohesion, parents and friends attitudes towards psycho-active substances to the attitudes towards the risk of using psycho-active substances.

This quantitative research employed self-report questionnaires to 548 Palestinian Arab adolescents to examine the attitudes toward the potential risks of experimenting and regularly using psychoactive substances, family cohesion, parental and friends' attitudes toward the use of psych-active substances.

It was hypothesized that the adolescents would attribute higher risk to the regular use when compared with experimentation.

Furthermore, family cohesion, parents and friends’ attitudes toward psycho-active substances will significantly predict the attitudes toward the risk of using psycho-active substances among adolescents.

After conducting regression analyses, it was found out that the adolescents attributed the higher risk to the regular use of psychoactive substances.

The risk level attributed to experimenting and using psychoactive substances was associated with the risk level attributed to the different psychoactive substances; the adolescents attributed the higher risk to hard drugs, other illegal drugs and cannabis more than soft drugs like inhalants, medications, alcoholic beverages and cigarettes.

Another finding was that the adolescents with cohesive and non-smoking families do not use inhalants, and/or medications in contrast with the teenagers with divided and smoking families.

According to the teenagers, the stricter the parents, the higher the level of risk of experimenting with cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, inhalants and medications will be.

In addition, the teenagers stated that the more negative the friends’ attitudes regarding psychoactive substances, the higher the level of risk of experimenting with alcoholic beverages, cannabis, medications and other illegal drugs will be.

It can be concluded that the use of psycho-active substances is considered to have more risk than the regular use of the substances.

In the Palestinian society, familial factors still have a high impact on the adolescents and affect their attitudes toward major issues, such as the experimentation of substance abuse.