The objective of the study was to examine the relationship between drug use and maltreatment during childhood among students from one university in San Salvador. This is a cross-sectional study, on a sample size of 272 students with a sampling error of 5%. The results showed prevalence of drug use sometime in life of 43.0%, 6.6% of students reported had been sexually abused, 24.6% reported physical abuse, 24.6% reported verbal abuse, and 12.9% declared being emotionally or physically neglected. 55.1% reported a minimum level of psychological distress. 58.5% have friends who use drugs. Alcohol, cannabis and tobacco are the most used drugs. At least 70% of students who use drugs suffered some kind of abuse. In terms of partnerships, only physical abuse was found significantly associated with a probability of error less than 0.05. These data shouldn't be generalized to university students of San Salvador, El Salvador.
Child abuse; Substance-related disorders; Students; Universities