Substance Use Among People Seeking Health Care Services in Primary Health Care Settings in Coastal Karnataka

Patients with substance use disorders are common in general medical practice and are a major risk factor for several non-communicable diseases. Appropriate screening is a vital step for providing brief interventions which can provide a good opportunity to tackle this crisis and in achieving target 3.5 of the sustainable development goal which includes strengthening the prevention and treatment of substance abuse.

To study the magnitude of substance use and factors associated with it among people seeking health care services at primary care settings.

The cross-sectional study recruited people seeking services at primary care settings to screen for substance users (SU) and determine the associated factors. The data was collected using a pretested semi-structured questionnaire including socio-demographic characteristics, health status and the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test tool.

The study showed that 43.4% of the participants were SU. The current use of smokeless tobacco was higher compared to tobacco smoking (21.3% and 4.7%). The multivariate logistic regression showed that advancing age (AOR: 2.61 and 95% CI of 1.01-6.79), male gender (AOR: 705 and 95% CI of 4.25-11.70), primary and middle school (AOR: 3.24 and 95% CI of 1.52-6.92) literacy status, unemployed (AOR: 0.49 and 95% CI of 0.25-0.95), religion and other backward caste (AOR: 2.42 and 95% CI of 1.37-4.30) were significant correlates of SU.

Substance use was reported by two-fifths of the participants seeking services at primary care centres in our study and stresses the need for incorporating brief interventions to prevent higher degrees of dependence and its complications.