Implementación del proceso de adopción de precauciones para prevenir la farmacodependencia en niños de edad escolar

Abstract

Within the context of a five-stage process Known as the Precaution Adoption Process (Weinstein, 1988) it was proposed to change six of the drug addiction risk factors, based on a 120 children sampling. These children came from various Engativa Santafe de Bogota District Schools, aged between 9 and 13. Risk factors were: lack of adequate information, low level of school adaptation, low level of self-steem, lack of frustration acceptance, assertive skills defficiency and lack of ability' to face the groups pressure. The procedure included a pretest, a six hours workshop given in three sessions, and the evaluation of results for each risk factor. It was assumed that at the end of the total program some children would be in a position to modify their knowledge and attitudes as well as their practices as regards one of the risk factors, chosen from the analysis each subject would have made of his/her vulnerability as regards the said factor. From the application of the Kruskal-Wallis test, it was observed that to evaluate the postest mean score obtained by the subjects that underwent Stages I. II and III (Group A), Stage IV (Group B) and Stage V (Group C), the differences were significant for the following factors: Low self-steem (9.58), low rate of frustration acceptance (11.25), assertive skills deficiency (89.49) and group's pressure (19.44).The results and implications are analyzed under the Precaution Adoption Process for the prevention of drug addiction in children.