DISTRIBUTION AND FREQUENCY OF BEHAVIORAL RISK FACTORS AMONG STUDENTS

Abstract

The health status of the population for the last few years is connected with increased frequency and severity of chronic non-infectious diseases, including diseases of blood circulation, respiratory diseases, diabetes, cancers, psychosis and traumatism. They are at the base of the disease-related mortality and the researching of this problem show the existence of common risk factors which are related with the life style. A feature of the non-infectious diseases is their massive appearance as a result of many reasons and exposure to risk factors with a long-term impact. Throughout their lives, people are exposed to many factors which are affecting their health. Most of the behavioral risk factors increase the probable appearance of adversely health events and the opportunity of developing a particular disease. Among the variety of risk factors in our modern society basically stand out as follows: smoking, alcohol and psychoactive drugs abuse, psychosocial stress, irrational nutrition, unhealthy sexual behavior and self-healing. The risk factors do not occur in isolation one from another and do not impact alone so one factor in many cases is connected with more than one disease and the diseases appear and develop as a result of interaction of many reasons and predisposing factors. That is why controllable and modifiable risk factors deserve a special attention as a part of behavioral health determinants. The spread of behavioral risk factors among young people, including students is a current issue. We can see an increase of frequency of these factors, decrease of the starting age of use and abuse of the listed substances and increase of their weight on population level. The object of this study are the students of Ruse University “Angel Kanchev” and their exposure to three risk factors-smoking, use of alcohol and psychoactive substances, as we are analyzing their frequency among the studied population and to what extend they are distributed among the students. In this study we are following the contemporary attitude to specific behavioral risk factors and their current characteristics, we are studying the preconditions leading to use of psychotropic substances among students and we are defining the combination of the studied risk factors and to what extent they are distributed among the population. The expectations of this study were that it would help to evaluate correctly the distribution of these behavioral risk factors among this young population. This can be helpful in developing of prevention and intervention programs for limiting of chronic non-infectious diseases and of their negative influence on the socio-economic development.