Craving and strategies of management among crack users and their consequences for the treatment in Santos city

• Grant number: 12/12309-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2013
• End date: July 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Collective Health - Public Health
• Principal Investigator: Adriana Marcassa Tucci
• Grantee: Carolina de Toledo Piza Kleiner
• Host Institution: Instituto de Saúde e Sociedade (ISS). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Baixada Santista. Santos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Crack, with its great power of addiction, has been a public health threat in our country, because it creates political, social and mental health problems. These users are more aggressive, usually due to craving and paranoid symptoms that affect them. Craving is a compulsive desire to use a substance that occurs due to the presence of psychological and physiological factors, which hinder the users permanence in treatment and maintaining them in abstinence. The present study aims to know and understand the strategies used by crack users in the management of craving and understand how they describe it for possible help in more appropriate intervention for this population. The method to be used will be qualitative, which will be held in-depth interviews guided by a semi-structured script in order to assist in understanding behavior patterns of crack users in the presence of craving and the culture related to that feeling. The sample will be composed of subjects from both sexes and aged eighteen years or more. The data analysis will include the following steps: exhaustive reading of the interviews, establishing of themes categories and collation of the contents of the categories with the literature and theoretical frameworks that guide the study. Subjects who agree to participate will sign the Participation Consent. The result of this study may assist in the implementation of new forms of intervention and treatment among crack users, strengthening public policy more appropriate to the drug issue. (AU)