Intervention Stigma Toward Medications for Opioid Use Disorder- Calling for Change
In this 3rd Fresh Perspectives webinar with Amara Davis, she interviews Dr. Erin Madden, professor at Wayne State University in the department of Family Medicine and Public Health Services, on her paper entitled Intervention Stigma Toward Medications for Opioid use Disorder: A Systemic Review. Dr. Madden cites her background in sociology and the personal toll opioid use has taken on people in her life as motivations for researching social processes around substance use and for developing and contributing to the scientific understanding of intervention stigma in treating substance use and opioid use disorder. Madden positively informs us on recent increases in funding support from the National Institute of Health to researchers to better understand the negative impact of stigma. During the interview, Dr. Madden shifts our focus beyond the interpersonal experience of stigma, as hurt feelings, to the large-scale damaging impact stigma and discriminatory practices have on people’s lives and their health outcomes, while also discussing government policies contributing to stigma, such as drug criminalization.
In Madden’s introducing of “intervention stigma” she addresses the distinct and harmful attitudes towards medication-based treatment of substance use disorder (i.e. opioids) and how intervention stigma of medical treatment for opioid use disorder is observed among healthcare professionals, recovery organizations, the general public, and peers. Dr. Madden attributes value systems, lack of medical understanding, structural factors, and policies as drivers of intervention stigma. For example, access to methadone for addiction treatment is made very difficult because of regulations that are unheard of for any other medical condition. While the causes of stigma have been largely established, our understanding of how to change stigma is poorly understood and more studies and work is strongly needed. A more specific version of intervention stigma is in provider care, in which research on improving understanding in the heterogeneous addiction treatment and recovery landscape would be highly impactful. While addressing stigma is a daunting undertaking, especially under the cloud of judicial-driven policy, a multipronged approach provides hope that through reducing intervention stigma we can improve the healthcare of those who use drugs and experience substance use disorder.
To see Amara Davis’s full interview with Erin Fanning Madden, Ph.D., see video below or view it on the LMI YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/Lj5CIp9WEWc
Erin Fanning Madden, Suzanne Prevedel, Timothy Light & Sandra H. Sulzer (2021): Intervention Stigma toward Medications for Opioid Use Disorder: A Systematic Review, Substance Use & Misuse, DOI: 10.1080/10826084.2021.1975749