Objective:

to analyze the relationship between Quality of Life and consumption of psychoactive substances in the students of African Continental Ancestry Groups.

Method:

this was an epidemiological, descriptive, comparative, and cross-sectional study carried out between August and November 2017 with adolescents enrolled in an Afro-Brazilian school in the northeast region. A simple random sampling procedure was adopted. For the data collection, the following instruments were used: a sociodemographic questionnaire, a survey on the Quality of Life (WHOQOL-bref), and a survey about consumption of psychoactive substances (DUSI - Drug Use Screening Inventory). The nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the groups.

Results:

the population consisted of 203 students; 123 (60.3%) of them were female; 108 (53.2%) were aged between 16 and 19 years old, and 157 (77.3%) considered themselves black. As for drug use, 101 (49.8%) adolescents reported to have used at least one licit or illegal drug. Alcohol was the most used drug (88 students in total). The adolescents who reported using psychoactive substances in the last month had a lower Quality of Life score in the physical (p<0,05), psychological (p<0,05), and environmental domains (p<0,05).

Conclusion:

the consumption of licit and illicit substances proved to be a point of great importance for the quality of life of adolescents of African ancestry and the perception of aspects related to the context in which they are inserted.