The Adolescents' Experience in Drug Abuse

Kim, Kway Bun; Lee, Kyung Ho

Abstract

This study was to provide understanding for the juvenile problem of drug brought about by industrialization, and the importance people that we should take a role in helping to resolve the problem. The purpose of this study lies in approaching the effective methods to prevent Korean adolescents from being involved in drug by examining the factors of their experience. The method of this study is designed to grasp the adolescents' drug experience, its meaning, its structure and the nursing intervention ways. By applying a phenomenological approach which is based on a qualitative research method, the researchers hoped to reveal key data in each group. It has been carried on from October 1998 until September 1999 with sample of 5 adolescent inmates in K mental hospital located in Seoul. The data were collected by sereous personal deep interviews and observations. Collected data were analyzed according to the phenomenological method suggested by Giorgi. The results of this study are as follows: First, pleasure seeking: curiosity, joy, and fun; Second, affiliation: formation of clique with the same age; Third, escape from reality: loneliness, emptiness, heroic mind, self- confidence, self-absorption, and comfort; Forth, feeble- mindedness: anxiety, fear, and temptation; Fifth, psychological unadaptation: wandering, forfeiture, and incompetence; Sixth, physical counteraction: headache, vomiting, loss of memory, loss of appetite and loss of sensibility; Seventh, psychological confusion: illusion, auditory hallucination and dream; Eighth, recovery of self-consciousness: repentance, desire and awareness This study results in the following suggestions of the nursing intervention 1. To cultivate a wholesome game culture for the adolescents. 2. To make up the group activities so that the adolescents can establish their sense of identity through a variety of group counseling program. 3. To foster the capability to cope with the change in the process of social accommodation. 4. To enforce the social life skill for the adolescents. 5. To practice the systematic education about drug use. 6. To develop the social education programs. 7. To help the adolescents build up their sense of identity by applying the adolescent cure programs. Above all, it is necessary that school and community as well as home should establish the educational environment paying special concern and consideration to the adolescents.