Abstract

Background

Many primary care clinicians (PCCs) hold stigma toward people with opioid use disorder (OUD), which may be a barrier to care. Few interventions exist to address PCC stigma toward people with OUD. This study examined whether an online training incorporating patient narratives reduced PCCs’ stigma toward people with OUD (primary) and increased intentions to treat people with OUD compared to an attention-control training (secondary).

Methods

PCCs from 15 primary care clinics were invited to complete a 30 min online training for an electronic health record-embedded clinical...

Background

Healthcare workers across the world have risen to the demands of treating COVID-19 patients, potentially at significant cost to their own health and wellbeing. There has been increasing recognition of the potential mental health impact of COVID-19 on frontline workers and calls to provide psychosocial support for them. However, little attention has so far been paid to understanding the impact of working on a pandemic from healthcare workers’ own perspectives or what their views are about support.

Methods

Key healthcare databases (Medline, PsychINFO and PubMed) were checked, from...

The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), jointly with the Mental Health Commission of Canada, will hold a new online self-learning and tutor-guided course "Understanding Stigma and Cognitive Behavioral Interpersonal Skills" from August 15 to November 30, 2022. 

The purpose of this course is to reduce mental health-related stigma and improve clinical and practice management skills among primary care providers when working with individuals experiencing mental health challenges.

In this blog post and guide, Dr. Stephen Parkin shares his observations about the use of stigmatising words and phrases in academic writing, and offers a list of person-centred and pragmatic alternatives.

The need to change our language in relation to people who use drugs has become an increasing topic of discussion, but there is still a long way to go. People who use drugs are highly diverse and their relationship with drug use takes many different forms. Current prohibitionist approaches to drug use and ‘war on drugs’ rhetoric do little to encourage language that acknowledges this. Instead, it promotes and maintains negative stereotypes that construct people who use drugs as morally flawed, inferior, unreliable, and dangerous.

Language does not standstill. It is dynamic, and the language and...

Stigma among healthcare providers is a barrier to the effective delivery of mental health services in primary care. Few studies have been conducted in primary care settings comparing the attitudes of healthcare providers and experiences of people with mental illness who are service users in those facilities. Such research is necessary across diverse global settings to characterize stigma and inform effective stigma reduction.

Qualitative research was conducted on mental illness stigma in primary care settings in one low-income country (Nepal), two lower-middle income countries (India, Tunisia...

Stigma is a major barrier to the well-being and recovery of people with lived and living experience of substance use disorders.

This animated video about two friends, Alex and Sam, explores the devastating impact of substance use stigma and how to challenge it in our communities.

Drawing on themes from CCSA’s qualitative research on stigma, “My Journey Starts with Compassion” tells a story about friendship, kindness and changing negative perceptions of people who use substances.