Life skills help keep youngsters off drugs
Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
About 70 teachers were standing on their chairs in the auditorium of Atma Jaya University in South Jakarta on Tuesday.
Without saying a word they encouraged the other teachers in the auditorium to get up on their chairs. Most of them did so, leaving only five teachers with their feet firmly planted on the ground.
"You see how easy it is to influence others, and how easy it is for people to succumb to peer pressure," said Tri Iswardani, a psychologist from the University of Indonesia.
Peer pressure has been identified as one of the major causes of substance abuse among young people, and given that sharing needles accounts for a large percentage of HIV/AIDS cases in the country the danger is even clearer.
According to the Jakarta AIDS Prevention Committee (KPAD), there are approximately 65,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Jakarta. The committee says there are also about 27,000 injecting drug users (IDUs) in the capital, 80 percent of whom are thought to be HIV positive.
In response to this threat, Atma Jaya University, in cooperation with the Indonesian Humanitarian Committee (KKI) and the Coca-Cola Foundation, organized a one-day training seminar for educators to help them create programs to prevent the spread of substance abuse in schools.
Some 150 educators from junior high schools, high schools and universities from across Jakarta were introduced to Life Skill Education (LSE), a module developed by the KKI and currently being implemented by Atma Jaya University.
A poll by Atma Jaya University of 1,446 students from its class of 2004 found that 88 percent of the students had never used drugs and 4.1 percent had used drugs in the past. It also found that 2.3 percent of respondents were still using drugs, while 5.6 percent did not respond to the question.
Those students who had used drugs in the past said they started in junior high school (36 percent), high school (33 percent), university (16 percent) and even elementary school (7 percent). The remaining 8 percent did not respond.
Nineteen percent of the students still taking drugs said they started using in junior high school, 16 percent at university and 13 percent in high school.
"Some of these students were introduced to drugs in the fourth grade of elementary school by uncles or someone close to them," said a researcher at Atma Jaya University, Murniati Agustian, adding that other students were introduced to drugs at university by their boyfriends or girlfriends.
"We believe it is important to save as many children as possible, and for this we must provide them with the life skills they need to be able to say no to drugs," said Tri Iswardani.
She said that in creating antidrug programs for schools, it was important to identify the target audience, taking into account their ages and cultural backgrounds.
"And one cannot generalize. The treatment for substance abuse that results from social pressure is different from treatment for psychological cases," she said, adding that it was also important to involve the whole family for treatment to work.
Clara, the principal of Abdi Siswa high school in Tanjung Duren, West Jakarta, said that although there had never been any cases of drug abuse at her school, she was interested in implementing the LSE program to prevent drugs from becoming a problem at the school.
"Next semester we plan to invite parents to get involved in educating students about the dangers of substance abuse and in building their life skills," she said.