Abstract

Social workers, psychologists and psychopharmacologists have devoted little attention to study the direct relationship between drugs and adolescents’ aggression. The main objective of this study was therefore to determine the extent of the level of aggressive behavior among adolescents who underwent rehabilitation of drug abuse. This study also sought to find out the relationship between type of drugs used with aggressive behavior among adolescents. Respondents were 200 adolescents from three juvenile Henry Gurney schools in Malaysia who took part in this exploratory cross-sectional survey research design. A set of questionnaire was constructed by the researcher based on the Aggression Questionnaires (AQ) scale. Results showed that the majority of adolescents (95 percent) indicated an aggressive behavior of moderate to high level. The result of the study also found that adolescents who have been using heroin (r = 0.016, p <0.05) and morphine drugs (r = 0.181, p <0.05) showed significant correlation with aggressive behavior. The findings provided evidence for the significant role of the goverment to enhance rehabilitation modules for adolescents involved in drug abuse. Education on how to effectively deal with aggressive behavior among adolescents at risk should be emphasized for building positive behavior among adolescents in order to produce potential young generation in the future.

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