OBJECTIVEIn order to understand the status of benzodiazepine (BZD) use in middleschool students from Wuhan city.

METHODSIn the Wuhan city zone, twenty-eight middle-schools were chosen randomly to the even numbers, with students from grade 8 to 12 had been studied. Altogether, 258 classes were investigated with 12 345 questionnaires were filled in by the subjects anonymously. SPSS 10.0 was used for data analysis.

RESULTSRate of BZD use in Wuhan middle school students was 4.0% with the rate of dependence as 4.1per thousand. There were differences in gender and grade: male students tend to be higher than females (P< 0.01), and senior higher than junior's (P < 0.01). More commonly used drugs would include Diazepam (59%) and Surazepam (29.7%). Among students who used drugs, 43.3% used for 1-7 day and 8.2% of them used 6 tablets or more. 57.6% used 1 tablet once a day (46.2%) before bed time (40.8%). The major reason for using drug was insomnia (43%), followed by pressure from school. The reasons for BZD abuse were: relief of anxiety (14.1%), curiosity (13.3%), peer pressure (10.8%), and fun seeking (9.85%), etc. The source of drugs was from their families (29%). By Multinomial logistic regression, the risk factors of abuse BZD were: ignorance of drug prescription, sex, regular alcohol intake, knowing that BZD use can bring amusement regular, smoking cigarettes, relationship with parents, mother's way of providing education, schooling of fathers, relationship between parents.

CONCLUSIONDifference was seen in the use of BZD between gender and age of the students. Multiple factors showed that: personal, family and social factors were related to the use of BZD.