Anxiety and Risk Behaviors Among Romanian Teenagers

Anxiety is also called “the dissease of the century” because it can be present in each and everyone of us. It is characterized by excesive fear and worries about events in daily life. It was defined by P. Janet as “the fear without reason”. The present paper rewiews the main resulf of a survey that was conducted based on questionnaires. A total of 313 teenagers from two high schools filled out two short questionnares. The first one was Hammilton Anxiety Rating Scale, witch was used to find out the anxiety level of the participants. The second questionnare was composed of questions about the frequency and social circumstances of drug and/or alcohol usage, such as: “How often do u consume alcohol/drugs?”, “Do u think that after u used drugs/alcohol your behavior affects the people around you?”. On the question “Are u used to drinking alcohol/using drugs”, half of the teenagers questioned stated that they aren’t used to drinking/consuming drugs, but , surprisingly and also worrying, 8.6% said that they are regular users, witch is 1 out of 10 teenagers, whilst 1.9% were using very often. The investigation we conducted revealed the complexity of romanian teenagers preception about alcohol/drug abuse. Field data showed that a significant part of the teenagers might be in risk of substance abuse. As a result, adolescents in this class must have the attention of specialists in psychological and social assistance.