Determinants Of Substance Use Among Adolescents Attending The Hiv Clinic At Mbarara Municipal Council Hc Iv

Abstract

Although there has been several programmes geared towards alleviating challenges such as stigma and opportunistic infections among adolescents living with HIV/AIDS, substance use is a public health concern. This study therefore sought to document the challenges, their association with substance use, as well as documenting the most commonly used substances among adolescents living with HIV/AIDS in Mbarara municipality. A cross sectional study design with quantitative methods using a pretested semi-structured interviewer administered questionnaire was used to collect information from adolescents living with HIV/AIDS attending Mbarara Municipal Council HC IV. Simple random sampling was used to select 187 study participants during the months of June to July 2017. A semi structured questionnaire was used to assess the determinants of substance use and associated challenges. The substance use questionnaire from The European School survey questionnaire on Alcohol and other drugs was adopted, adjusted and used. Results of this study indicate that adolescents with stigma had higher odds of substance use (AOR=0.2, 95%CI: 0.03-0.85, p<.01). Findings also indicate that there was an association between stigma and alcohol use (AOR=0.4, 95%CI: 0.12-0.53,p<.05). In addition, results revealed that adolescents who were experiencing stigma had higher odds of alcohol use and adolescents with opportunistic infections had higher risk of using Marijuana. (AOR=0.4, 95%CI: 0.09-1.98, p<0.05).In general adolescents living with HIV/AIDS experience challenges that are related to substance use especially alcohol and marijuana. Therefore this study’s results call for interventions to motivate/support HIV positive adolescents in resource limited settings focusing on substance use.