ABSTRACT
Percentage of students abusing drug seem to be on increase with no clear cut treatment option available for the drug abusers. This situation is unhealthy as it affects the academic well being of the student or the abuser. It is against this background that this study focused on the Effect of Cognitive Restructuring and Assertiveness Training on Drug Abuse among Secondary School Adolescents in Onitsha Education Zone of Anambra State. Five research questions and six hypotheses guided the study. The study was an experimental one and the design adopted was the randomized post test only group design. The population for the study consisted of 256 senior secondary school student drug abusers identified with drug users observation scale. Purposive sampling technique was used to compose 60 students from Onitsha Zone of Anambra State. The sampling was based on urban and rural schools. Students who had a mean score of 3 on a four point rating scale were considered to manifest the characteristics of drug abusers and were selected for the study. The subjects were purposively assigned to the three different treatment groups. The instrument used in data collection was the Modified Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) developed by Skinner (1982), and the Drug Users Observation Scale (DUOS) developed by the researcher used in identifying the drug abusers. The instruments were validated by three experts in measurement and evaluation, psychology and guidance and counselling from University of Nigeria Nsukka. The reliability tests of the Modified Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST) and the Drug Users Observation Scale (DUOS) were ascertained using Cronbach Alpha. To determine the reliability of the instruments, they were used on 20 drug abuse adolescent students. After computation the internal consistency reliability estimates for DUOS and DAST were 0.81 and 0.70 respectively. The data collected was analyzed using means, standard deviation, t-test and one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results of the study showed that the combination of cognitive restructuring and assertiveness training was the most effective therapy while the use of the therapies alone was also effective in reducing drug abuse among students. Based on the findings of the study, the following five recommendations were made among which were: that teachers and students alike should be taught how to use cognitive restructuring and assertiveness training techniques in treating drug abuse and other behaviour problems. The educational implications were also highlighted among which were that the drug users observation scale used in this study could be used by counsellors in identifying students who engage in drug abuse and then treat them with cognitive restructuring and assertiveness training techniques. Again, secondary school teachers and counsellors should be acquainted with the skills and techniques of cognitive restructuring and assertiveness training treatments to enable them use them on secondary school adolescents.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Adolescence is a period that begins with the onset of puberty and rapid physical development. Ngwoke and Eze (2010) described adolescence as the period of physical growth and development that brings to an end childhood and enables the growing person to achieve adult size, shape and sexual reproductive capacity. It is a period when the adolescent moves from dependent childhood stage to independent adulthood. Other authors like Onyejiaku (1991) in his opinion reported that adolescence has been described as being mysterious, boisterous, turbulent, venturesome and very unpredictable. In other words, the adolescents may be found to be emotionally and psychologically unstable sometimes because of the changes they experience at this time. Ngamkhuchung (2002) sums it up by observing that this period is loaded with a lot of crisis, turmoil, struggle, frustration, insecurity, and emotional upheavals, including those arising from drug intake. For purposes of the present work, adolescence is defined as a period marked by rapid physical, mental, psychological and emotional changes in the individual which leads to certain behaviour changes. The adolescent boy or girl in the process of coping with these changes sometimes falls ‘prey’ to wrong ideas from either their peers or irresponsible adults and engage in deviant behaviours like sexual abuse, drug abuse, cultism, truancy among others.
Drug abuse is among the most serious deviant behaviours exhibited by the youths today especially the adolescents (Oyakilome, 1990; Kaltung, 1997). Drug abuse could have adverse effects on the users and the society. It can lead to violence, immorality, school dropouts, truancy, indiscipline, poor performance, suicide and sexual abuse. Drug can be defined as any substance, apart from food that alters the structure or function of the living organism by virtue of it’s chemical or physical component or nature (Nwadinobi, 2004). According to Odo (2004), drugs are food, medications, beverages and drinks, which are used to achieve positive results if and only if used in accordance with the prescriptions of medical experts, manufacturers or producers or when used in conformity with ethical standards. Some examples of drugs according to Odo include tobacco, alcohol, marijuana stimulants, like cocaine, heroin, sedative and tranquillizers. For Eze (2005) Drug means anything that alters the metabolic processes of the body, creating momentary excitement and or other behaviour changes.
Drugs are classified as legal and illicit or illegal. Some of the legal drugs like antibiotics, vitamin supplements, antacids and analgesics are used for therapeutic purposes and such drugs are not harmful to the body system unless they are abused. The illicit drugs refer to such drugs that are used for pleasure or means of relieving tension. Eze (2005) in his view submits that they are sometimes referred to as hard drugs. These drugs which are usually abused cause parents some concern because their influences have adverse effect on the lives of users, their families and the society at large.
For Nwadinobi (2004), drug abuse is an unnecessary or wrong use of illicit or acceptable drugs. Ngamkhuchug (2002) sees drug abuse as the consumption of illegal drugs such as Indian hemp, heroine, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol and others for purposes other than social or medical needs.
In the context of this work, drug abuse is defined as misuse, or wrong use, particularly excessive use of any drug. When drug is abused, the fact is that the user has started deriving stimulation from taking it, he therefore takes it indiscriminately without any prescription and with reckless abandon, getting hooked on it. This can be reduced using counselling techniques.
Drug abuse by adolescents in Onitsha Education zone is such that some schooling adolescents between the ages of 11 and 25 seem to have taken psychoactive drugs at least once as shown by their drug related characteristics (Nwadinobi 2004). Continuing, Nwadinobi attests to the fact that hormonal drugs, stimulants and alcohol are abused by both male and female students. However, female students use hormonal drugs more than the male students while male students use stimulants and alcohol more than their female counterparts (Nwadinobi, 2004). This may be because hormonal drugs are associated with females alone while stimulants like indian hemp, cigarettes, kolanut, and alcoholic beverages are also associated with males mainly. This may be traced to the cultural setting of the Igbos through personal experience where alcohol and tabacco form a base for most traditional and religious rites of which the males are the chief celebrants. Again, male adolescents in the urban centres appear to abuse more drugs like Indian hemp, marijuana and other stimulants, while those in rural areas abuse alcoholic beverages and kolanut, probably because of their use in religious and traditional ceremonies. Personal observations have also shown that in Igboland female adolescents in the rural areas rarely abuse drugs because of the cultural limitation placed on women socially. Their counterparts in the urban area abuse hormonal drugs while a few of them engage in stimulants abuse. In line with this, Okoye (2001) found out in his study that rural male secondary school adolescents are free and more comfortable with drug abuse than their urban counterparts.
Different factors have been identified to be associated with drug abuse. Drug abuse among Nigerian adolescents has been attributed to misery, mass poverty, large scale, unemployment, deprivation, crumbling family support system and socio-economic depression (NDLEA/UNDCP joint report, 1994, Dare, 1995). Other factors include increased availability of psychoactive drugs in Nigeria and psychological problems which include personality traits like attitude, anger, impulsivity, anxiety and depression as well as under achievement. But far from these factors can be located to the inability of the adolescents to appraise situations and take decision without necessarily looking up to their peers which has further raised the rate of drug abuse among adolescent (Ambrosino, 1990).
In spite of the increasing rate and effects of drug addiction among adolescent in the country such as poor academic achievement, medical problems, legal and social problems, dropping out of school, little or no effort had been made by Government agencies, public and private enterprises to set up treatment centres or develop treatment methods that will be most effective within the Nigerian context in treating adolescent drug users (Rapu, 1990, Osih, 1997; Okoye, 1998). Adolescents tend to have little awareness of the potential threats to their physical and psychological well being from alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs. Nwakaibie (2006) added in his own submission that smoking of tobacco can cause chronic disease, coronary heart disease, cancer of the lung, larynx esophagus among others. The author went further to say that the use of psychoactive drugs has resulted in lots of deviant behavious among the youth like truancy, armed robbery, kidnapping, prostitution among others in the present society.
The individual who abuses drug is dangerous to himself and the society such that the situation may lead to mental deterioration, social malfunctioning, indiscipline, and rioting, moral decadence, negative attitude to work, low productivity and lack of self control (Egereonu 2003). No matter how one puts it, the point being made is that drug abuse does the individual more harm than good hence the victim needs to be remedied out of drugs for a better life. As pointed out earlier, there is no treatment option in the country with tested effectiveness among adolescent drug users. Yet, various treatment options are available, for adolescent treatment worldwide, for example in United States of America, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has the Brief Strategic Family Therapy for Adolescent Drug Abuse (BSFT). This is a treatment option and a brief intervention used to treat adolescent drug abuse that occurs with other problem behaviours. Also there are the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Annonymous (NA) and Cocaine Annonymous (CA) which are self-help treatment programmes meant for drug abuse patients. (no name info@drugreliabreferral.com 2010) retrieved September 2010.
In Nigeria, the society is often hard on the drug addicts, condemning and scolding them and making them feel rejected and these oftentimes aggravate the situation instead of curbing it. In line with this, Nnodum (2003) reported that Nigeria as a nation has made several efforts to control drug use and abuse and it’s trafficking through decrees with harsh punitive measures. Again, parents and teachers have tried to dissuade adolescents from substance abuse by engaging in intimate discussions with them about health hazards of drugs. In addition, social welfare departments sometimes mount enlightenment campaigns against drug and alcohol abuse directed towards not only adolescents but also parents, teachers and other adults. All these measures have been taken, yet the number of people who abuse drugs in our secondary schools appear to be on the increase. It would appear that nobody has really taken time to ask what the problem of the drug abuse adolescent is and what needs of his that are not being met which tend to lead him into escaping into drug abuse.
Often parental neglect could have a contributory factor. In line with this Odoemelam (2009) made it clear that the absence of positive family interaction, provision of essential services and parental support can lead to a wide variety of undesirable behaviours among youths especially when the adults are poor role models and the government is failing in its duty. In such circumstances, adolescents sometimes feel at home and prefer to listen to their peers more than they do to their parents and constituted authorities. Students from Onitsha Education zone is not left out of this idea of ‘following the crowd’ syndrome hence, most of the students who abuse drugs like Indian hemp do so in order to ‘belong’ to their group.
Since psychoactive drugs have negative effects on the users as pointed out especially on the secondary schooling adolescents, there is the need for appropriate long term/ permanent solution to the devastating effect of drug abuse on the future generation. It is indisputable that some of the students who resort to drugs end up dropping out of school while those who manage to graduate become adult drug addicts. This ugly development should not be allowed to continue hence the need for counseling. Drowetzky (1997) categorically states that behavioural technique corrects problems such as aggression, phobias, shyness, and poor study habits. Such techniques as cognitive restructuring and assertiveness training have been seen by scholars as being effective with changing behaviours that have to do with phobias. Whether such could equally be used to modify drug addiction is yet to be empirically ascertained. In view of the above, the researcher hopes to find out the effect of two behaviour modification technique of cognitive restructuring and assertiveness training on drug abuse reduction.
Cognitive restructuring is a behaviour modification technique which is based on teaching a client how to reduce negative emotional reactions by getting him to interpret situations with greater accuracy. Specifically the problem is to get the individual or client to avoid crooked thinking and think straight. The cognitive restructuring theorist Ellis(1993) states that cognitive restructuring is the process of learning to refute cognitive distortion or fundamental faulty thinking with the goal of replacing one’s irrational counter factual beliefs with more accurate and beneficial ones. In other words, cognitive restructuring or cognitive behaviour modification aims at replacing irrational beliefs or thinking with rational ones. The authors went further to present the steps involved in cognitive restructuring to include the following:
- Information on what the group will be doing.
- Presentation of rationale; making efforts to get clients to learn that internal verbalizations affect the way we feel about human situations.
- Review of irrational assumptions of clients.
- State what really constitutes the problem?
- Teach the client to modify his internal verbalizations. This may imply that the client comes to realize that his initial thoughts about things like drug abuse were irrational thinking.
The major task facing the therapist engaged in restructuring therefore is how to modify the client’s distorted perception of the world (Essuman, Nwaogu, and Nwachukwu 1990). Cognitive restructuring have proved effective in reducing other behaviour problems. Supporting this assertion in his opinion Drowetzky(1997) states that behavioural techniques such as cognitive restructuring and assertiveness training have been seen by scholars as being effective in correcting problems, like aggression, pilfering, prostitution, indiscipline, phobias, shyness and poor study habits. This is because it is the therapists’ assumption that one’s interpretation of reality determines his emotional response to it. In other words, it is the interpretation the adolescent gives to getting involved in drug that lures him into it. If he is made to think otherwise, he may not engage in drug abuse.
On the other hand, assertiveness training is one of the classical conditioning techniques of Pavlov. It is used to help individuals openly express thoughts and feelings. It is also used to assist individuals to be bold and stand their ground so as to initiate actions and confront objects they dread. Assertiveness training ought to be considered as a means of behavioural change and therefore can be learned. The shy and the withdrawn child are usually unassertive and this behaviour can make him to join adolescent drug abusers since he cannot say no emphatically. Clark, Corbisiero, Procidaro and Grossman (1984) declared in their submission that the goal of assertiveness training technique is to restructure the client’s environment in such a way that they would learn to live more comfortably among people without experiencing excessive anxiety. Consequently this technique is viewed as behavioural approach that helps to reduce both anxiety and hostility and encourages free expression without infringing on the rights of others. This approach includes a set of exercises which are summarized below:
1 The use of feeling talk to practice expressing emotions.
2 The use of facial talk to practice the facial expression which ordinarily accompanies the emotion.
3 Practice in expressing contradictory opinions.
