The relationship between high school students' substance abuse proclivity with family structure, attachment style and hopelessness

There are a lot of possible causes to determine attitudes toward seeking substance abuse proclivity among high school students. The main purpose of the present study is to examine the high school students' attitudes toward seeking substance abuse proclivity according to family structure, attachment styles, hopelessness and some socio demographic variables. As socio demographic variables, "gender, type of high school, class differences, family type, family attitude, family socio-economic level, substance use of students and family, birth order among siblings" were investigated. The study group consisted of 903 high school students (513 females and 390 males) studying at black sea region, a province in which the metropolitan status, in 2015-2016 academic year. The data were collected with "Beck Hopelessness Scale" developed by Beck, Weissman, Lester and Trexler (1974) and adapted into Turkish by Durak and Palabiyikoglu (1994); "Relationship Scales Questionnaire" developed by Griffin and Bartholomew (1994) and adapted into Turkish by Sümer and Güngör (1999); "Family Structure Evaluation Device" developed by Gülerce (1996) and "Substance Abuse Proclivity Scale (SAP)" developed by MacAndrew (1986) and adapted into Turkish by Ceyhun, Oğuztürk and Ceyhun (2001) are used. "Personal Information Scale" developed by the researcher is used to get information about demographic charateristics of students. For the data analysis, SPSS 22.0 was used and Spearman Test, Multiple Linear Regression, Mann Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis test techniques were applied. The result indicated that a significant relationship was found among high school students' substance abuse proclivity and hopelessnes and preoccupied attachment style in pozitive way. A significant relationship was found among high school students' substance abuse proclivity and union, management and competence dimensions of family structure in pozitive way. Furthermore, substance abuse proclivity was differentiated according to the gender, type of high school, class differences, family attitude, family socio-economic level, substance use of students and family. The results discussed in context of literature and suggestions were provided.