| Summary: | Depression and aggressive behaviours among drug abusers have raised an alarming
concern among researchers, practitioners, and scholars around the world. However,
research in this area is still very limited in Malaysia since the statistic did not reveal the
details of stage of drug dependency, depression and aggressive behaviour among drug
abuser. Hence, this study is focused on identifying the stage of drug dependency among
drug abuser, the level of depression of drug abuser and the level of aggressive behaviour
of drug abuser. Furthermore, this research is examined the relationship between
depression and aggressive behaviour among drug abuser and the relationship between
physical, verbal, anger and hostile dimensions with depression among drug abuser. This
research used quantitative method for data collection in Marang Prison, Terengganu. It
involved 200 drug abusers as respondents. Researcher chose questionnaire of The Drug
Abuse Screening Test (DAST-20), Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale (DASS-21) and
Aggressiveness Questionnaire (AQ). All the selected questionnaires were validated by
School of Social Sciences Work Ethics' Committee, Faculty of Applied Social Sciences
Cronbach's Alpha for DAST-20 was 0.954, DASS-21 was 0.963 and AQ was 0.961.
The data collected has been analysed by using descriptive, Pearson Correlation
Coefficient and Multiple Regression. The results showed that the stage of drug
dependency among drug abusers was low (n= 98) followed by a normal level of
depression among drug abusers (n=98) and low level of aggressive behaviours (n= 98).
Meanwhile, the relationship between depression and aggressive behaviours among drug
abusers were a statistically significant linear relationship with the positive direction of
the relationship and moderate (r=0.8]9, p<O.Ol) strength of the relationship. Lastly, the
:relation§hip between physical, verbal, anger and hostile dimensions with depression
among drug abusers were depression (F (4,195) = 66.493, p<0.05, R2 = 0.577). These
three variables were statistically significant to the prediction, p < .05. Based on the
finding it shows that drug abusers in Marang Prison were having a low drug
dependency, normal level of depression, low level of aggressive behaviours and
strongly interconnected variables between depression and aggressive behaviours.
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