Effect of group education on self-efficacy and craving tendencies in drug abusers in 5th Azar Drug Abuse Treatment Center of Gorgan

The present study aims to determine the effect of group education on self-efficacy and craving tendencies in drug abusers. The control group completed craving tendencies and self-efficacy questionnaires. The control group received a normal clinical intervention and then completed the questionnaires again after a month. The experimental group completed two questionnaires of craving tendencies and self-efficacy. They were subjected to eight 90-min sessions of group learning in one month (twice a week). Posttests were conducted after the interventions. Before intervention, control and experimental groups showed insignificant difference in terms of self-efficacy; however, after the intervention, there was a significant difference between these two groups (p = 0.026). Furthermore, the results of within-group comparison revealed that there was a significant difference in the experimental group before and after the intervention (p = 0.009) so that self-efficacy average increases after the intervention while there was no such significant difference in control group. Moreover, craving tendencies did not show significant difference between the experimental and control groups (p = 0.001), whereas the mean craving tendencies in experimental group were lower than that in control group. Also, craving tendencies decreased significantly after the intervention in the experimental group whereas no significant difference was found in control group. © 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license