Addressing Stigma
We're preparing an overview of where we are as a collaborative in effectively addressing stigma - please send an email to qiadvisor@pqcnc.org to let us know whether you have any active programs/interventions/trainings/resources currently in place to address stigma along with a brief description - thanks!
Overall, respondents supported opportunities for maternal recovery yet blamed women, describing mothers as culpable for causing harm to their newborn, showcasing internally conflicting views. These views could contribute to ongoing stigma and avoidance of care among pregnant women with OUD.
• Public stigma is driven by stereotypes about people with opioid use disorders, such as their perceived dangerousness or perceived moral failings, which translate into negative attitudes toward people with opioid use disorders.
• Enacted stigma describes the behavioral manifestations of public stigma, including dis- crimination and social distancing. Public and enacted stigma, in turn, lead to delivery of suboptimal care and undermine access to treatment and harm reduction services.
• Public stigma and enacted stigma can become structural stigma when they become encoded in cultural norms, laws, and institutional policies. Collectively, these forms of stigma run at cross purposes to—and reduce public support for—public health–oriented policies to address the opioid overdose crisis.
• When people with opioid use disorders internalize or anticipate the public stigma attached to their illness, maladaptive behaviors (e.g., disengagement from care) leading to poorer health outcomes may occur.
Responding to the public health crisis in the United States resulting from untreated opioid use disorder (OUD) requires expanding delivery of effective treatments, including medications, and eliminating stigma against people with OUD and people seeking OUD treatment. Stigma discourages people with substance use disorders from seeking care and compromises the care they receive when they do seek it. Stigma against both medication treatments for OUD and harm-reduction approaches like syringe services programs has created additional barriers to these strategies' acceptance and use. It is ethically incumbent upon everyone in medicine and health care to recognize addiction not as a moral failing but as a treatable disease.
