Locus of control and impulsivity as correlates of substance use disorder among outpatients in a psychiatric hospital

Abstract

Substance use disorder has been identified as an emerging national health concern especially amongst young people. Some of the drugs listed under this category of disorder have been identified to be the leading causes of death and psychopathology in the world. Locus of control and impulsivity have been shown to be correlates of substance use disorder. This study aims to assess and evaluate locus of control and impulsivity as correlates of substance use disorder amongst 113 (comprising 102 males and 11 females) outpatients diagnosed with substance use disorder in a Federal Neuropsychiatric hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. Three instruments - the Drug Abuse Screening Test 10 (DAST); the 21-item Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-Revised (BIS-R-21) and Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale (N-SLCS) were used to gather the data for the study. Three hypotheses were proposed and tested. The data was collected using cross sectional survey research design and analysed using descriptive statistics, correlational analysis and regression. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between locus of control and substance use disorder; also there was a significant positive correlation between impulsivity and substance use disorder and there was a joint positive correlation between locus of control, impulsivity and substance use disorder. There was also a predominance of substance use disorder in males than females and also amongst younger participants. It was recommended that there was the need for close persons, parents, significant others and Health care providers to teach children and other young people to take responsibility for their actions and to learn how to delay gratification from an early age as most people with substance use disorder attributed the cause of their disorder to either the influence of friends, parents or other external and environmental factors outside of themselves.