Psychoactive Drug Use by Medical Students: a review of the national and international literature.

Acesse: Medical student.pdf 

Psychoactive Drug Use by Medical Students: a review of the national and international literature.

In recent years, the problem of non-medical use of psychoactive drugs by medical students and doctors, has become an area of growing interest and concern to researchers, educational institutions and medical associations (6; 22; 23; 27; 32; 34; 42; 44). Doctors themselves can be seen as occupying diametrically opposite, and at times conflicting, positions in relation to substance misuse: one the one hand they have a higher prevalence of drug misuse, but on the other have a pivotal role to play in the early detection of drug misuse among colleagues and and the referral of these colleagues to appropriate services (13; 14; 19; 28).The aims of this review are three-fold. Firstly to evaluate the published data on drug misuse among Brazilian medical students; secondly to compare these findings with studies from other countries; and finally to look at how interventions aimed at identifying and treating this problem might be developed.