Effect of Reality Therapy on Attitudes of Drug Addicts at the Specialist Hospital Gombe, Nigeria

The research investigated the effects of reality therapy on the attitudes of drug addicts at the Specialist Hospital Gombe, Nigeria. The specific aim was to determine the effect of the Reality Therapy intervention on the attitudes of drug addicts of Specialist Hospital Gombe. To achieve the three objectives formulated for the study, three hypotheses were tested at a 0.05 level of significance. True experimental pre-test post-test control group design was adopted. The population of this study consisted of all drug addicts at the Specialist Hospital Gombe during the period of conducting the research. The hospital had a total population of 63 drug addicts who received in and outpatient treatment, consisting of 52 males and 11 females. The sample of this study consisted of 20 clients who scored between 11-15 points on the Drug Abuse Screening Test. The sample comprised 17 males and three females aged between 18-36 years old and above. The content validity of the three instruments used in the study were established by three different specialists in the Faculty of Education, University of Jos, Cronbach's alpha method was used in estimating the reliabilities of the two instruments. The reliability coefficients for DAST- 20 and DAS were 0.87, and 0.85 respectively. The major findings of the study indicated that; the post-test attitudes mean scores of the drug addicts in the experimental group were greater than the pre-test attitudes toward recovery from addiction mean scores of the drug addicts in the control group. Therefore, there was an improvement in the attitudes of drug addicts toward recovery from addiction because of the Reality Therapy intervention given.