Perceptions of substance use, treatment options and training needs among Iranian primary care physicians

Table 1 GPs' perceptions of substance use characteristics of their patients (N = 53)

Characteristic ^a	% or n
Of your patients who have drug problems, what % are:
Male	81%
What is the cause of addiction? ^b
Emotional	49%
Social	45%
Family	35%
Economic	31%
Leisure	31%
Wrong role models	26%
In the last 5 years, have drug addiction trends increased, decreased, unchanged:
Increased	94%
In the last 5 years, drug abuse increased more for males or females ^c :
Females	42%
Males	38%
Same	18%
If increased, why? ^d
Social/family issues	22
Economic reasons	20
Unemployment	17
Easy access to drugs	17
Lack of recreation/sport facilities	10
Youth-related issues	9
Ineffective law enforcement/government action	6
Inadequate education	2
Other	10
What is your view of drug addicts? ^b
Psychologically ill	82%
Physically ill	22%
Burden on society	22%
Criminals	2%
Level of awareness about substance abuse ^e
Moderate	54%
High	27%

^aData missing: n = 2–5
^bDoes not sum to 100%, because some GPs gave more than one answer and some gave no answer
^cDon't know = 2%
^dDoes not sum to 53, because some GPs gave more than one answer and same gave no answer
^eAwareness rated on Likert scale from 1 (very unaware) – 10 (very aware): low = 1–3; moderate = 4–8; high = 8–10

ISSN: 1475-9276