High-risk drug use among Palestinian adolescent refugees in the North West Bank Palestine

Abstract

Palestinian adolescent refugees are at increased risk for behaviors that can lead to poor health outcomes, such as high-risk substance use. This research focuses on the prevalence of substance use and its relationship with depression among adolescent male refugees in Palestine’s North-West Bank. A cross-sectional study was conducted in five of seven refugee camps to gather data using a proportional stratified sampling technique. A structured questionnaire-based interview was conducted to gather sociodemographic data, self-reported substance use, and depression scale information. Additionally, urine screening tests were used to detect the presence of different drugs in participants’ urine samples. The final sample size was 386 refugee males; 24.0% were workers, and 13.7% worked previously. For self-reported substance use, 26.9%;12.4%; 28.0%; 37.0%; and 60.4%, 2.6% of adolescents reported current users of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, waterpipe, coffee, energy drinks (ED), and alcohol, respectively. Moreover, 3.4% tested positive for at least one drug. The drugs that tested positive were as follows: PCP (5%), MDMA (1.8%), THC (1.6%), BZO (0.5%), and MET (0.5%). The adjusted logistic regression showed an increased risk of depression among workers (OR = 3.777; p-value = 0.008), cigarette smokers (OR = 2.948; p-value = 0.04), waterpipe smokers (OR = 4.458; p-value = 0.041), and coffee users (OR = 2.883, p-value = 0.046). In conclusion, Palestinian adolescent refugees are at increased risk for behaviors that can lead to poor health outcomes, such as high-risk substance use, including illicit drugs, alcohol use, tobacco smoking, and ED intake. The results of this study reveal alarming figures on drug use associated with depression in refugee camps which demand controlling interventions.

Keywords:

• Drug abuse
• depression
• Palestinian refugee adolescents
• UNRWA
• amphetamine
• THC
• Palestine

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Committee Services for Refugee Camps for their help.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of An-Najah University’s Institutional Research Ethics Board, approval reference number (Ref: Med. August 2022/7), and with the 2013 Helsinki Declaration.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Authors’ contributions

BD contributed to conceptualization, resources, methodology, formal analysis, supervision, and original draft preparation. MS, SK, MB, QS, IA, MH, and NK contributed to methodology, data curation, and original draft preparation. AA and AH contributed to supervision. SB contributed resources. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. All authors agreed to submit the manuscript to the Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.