EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE AND RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOUR THERAPIES ON DRUG ABUSE OF SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN IBADAN

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of cognitive behaviour therapy and rational emotive behaviour therapy on drug abuse of senior secondary school students in Ibadan, Nigeria. The study adopted a pretest-posttest, control group Quasi-experimental design. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 120 participants from three randomly selected secondary schools in Ibadan. The participants were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. The two treatment groups were exposed to eight-week training in cognitive behaviour and rational emotive behaviour therapies, while participants in the control group received no training. One validated instrument: School Drug Abuse Rating Scale (DARS) as used and four hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed using Analysis of Covariance and MCA. The results of the study revealed that there was significant main effect of treatment on the ability of student’s to overcome their drug abuse challenges (F (3,116) = 6.613, p < .05).Also, the findings indicated that Cognitive Behaviour and Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapies were effective in effecting a behavioural change in students with challenges of drug abuse. Likewise, the result further revealed that there was no significant difference in the main effect of age between (younger and older); gender (male and female) on the drug abuse act of student participants. Also, the three way interaction effect of treatment with age and gender was not significant. Therefore, school authorities should adopt the two interventions as to effectively manage the challenging issue of drug abuse among secondary school students’ in school