Assessment of Effectiveness of Psychodrama on Level of Awareness Regarding Ill-effects of Substance Abuse among Railway Employees, Perambur, Chennai

Substance abuse refers to a pattern of pathological use of alcohol, cannabis, opiates, hallucinogens, inhalants, nicotine and caffeine. The most widely abused substances in industrial population are alcohol, cannabis and nicotine. In low quantities it causes people to become less inhibited but, in higher doses it can cause serious physical, psychological, family, work related, and societal problems. As part of the contemporary dynamic of globalization there has been an increased use of psychoactive substances such as Alcohol, Cannabis and Nicotine has been acknowledged to have multiple consequences to healthy society and economy. So, it is highly essential to enhance the level of awareness regarding ill-effects of abusing Alcohol, Cannabis & Nicotine.

The main objective of this study was to study to assess the effectiveness of Psychodrama on level of awareness regarding ill-effects of substance abuse among Railway employees, Perambur, Chennai.

The quantitative quasi-experimental research approach and one group pretest-posttest design was chosen for the study. The demographic profile and Five point rating scale questionnaire was used to collect the data from 60 employees selected out of 200 for the study by Lottery method of simple random sampling technique.

With regard to age majority 24(40%) of employees were in the age group of above 46 years. The comparison of pre and post test scores revealed that ‘t’ value was 25.95 for level of awareness regarding ill effects of substance abuse among Railway employees which showed a high statistical significance at ***p<0.001 level.

This study result revealed that there was an enhancement in level of awareness after the psychodrama session on ill-effects of substance abuse therefore intervention was found effective.