Introduction: Addiction is a physical and mental disorder, which because of its progressive nature endangers the health of individual and community in all aspects of life. The present research aimed to understand the mediating role of novelty seeking in the relationship between Parenting styles and addiction tendency in high school students in the city of Ilam.
 
Materials & methods: The statistical population of present research consisted of all high school boy students in the first semester 2015-2016 academic years; therefore, 410 students were selected with multistage random sampling, and completed the Baumrind parenting styles questionnaire, Cloninger novelty sensation scale and Zargar addiction potentiality. The data have been analyzed by Pearson correlation test and path analyses using Amos -16.
 
Findings: Results showed that the proposed model had sufficient fitness with data of research. Path analysis showed that parenting styles significantly affected novelty sensation and addiction potentiality directly. Also, it was found out that novelty sensation had mediating role in the relationship between parenting styles and addiction potentiality.
 
Discussion & conclusions: According to present research results, novelty sensation is one of the most effective reasons on student’s tendency to drug abusing. With this in mind, the hygienic officials and activists should make policies to increase parent’s information in suitable parenting styles education field and the important role of personality characteristic in tendency to addiction.