Stress, Social Support and substance abuse among University Students.

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between stress social support and substance abuse among University students the objectives of this study focused on examining the relationship between stress and social support, the relationship between stress and substance abuse and well as the relationship between social support and substance abuse. Makerere university population was taken as our study population and an estimated study population of 40000 students was used. Using the sampling table developed by Krejcie and Morgan (1970) a sample size of 380 participants was selected out of the total population. An accidental sampling technique was used to collect the data and using the statistical package for social science (SPSS) data was analyzed to give results. A Pearson’s correlation was used to test the hypothesis. Our study comprised of more male participants s within average of 54.2% than the female participants with an average of 45.5%. Many participants were aged 19 to 23 years. The study results implied that there is a significant relationship between stress and social support among university students (r= -.109, P=.034<0.05). Furthermore, there’s also a significant relation between tress and substance abuse among university student (r=.127, P=.014<0.05). however, there’s no significant relationship between substance abuse and social support (r=-.055, P=.284>0.05). In a nutshell, stress has a significant destructive impact in the lives of university students as it’s a major reason for their involvement in substance abuse due to poor coping strategies of stress. However, with influence form good social support networks among university students, stress van be amicably handled as well as deny a chance of drug or substances to play in the lives of university students. Therefore, we recommend university student to find good peers for social support as this will help them to with better coping strategies to overcome stressful events while at the university and as well engage in substance abuse