Research paperDoes it matter how we refer to individuals with substance-related conditions? A randomized study of two commonly used terms☆
Section snippets
Study population and protocol
The study population consisted of 728 mental health care providers attending two mental health/addiction-focused conferences in October, 2008. Conference attendees present at the start of two addiction-focused talks (there was only a single stream of conference presentations) were handed the study survey and asked if they would be willing to complete it. There were two survey forms representing the two levels of the independent variable (IV; i.e., “substance abuser” and “substance use
Results
The 516 individuals who completed the survey (71% response rate) had a mean age of 51, almost two-thirds were female (63.4%), four-fifths identified as “White” (81.0%); and almost two-thirds had a doctoral-level degree (64.5%). The majority indicated a professional focus in mood (66.9%) and anxiety disorders (59.9%), followed by psychosis (37%), and alcohol/drug problems (34.8%).
The principal axis factoring extraction and oblique Promax rotation yielded a solution with three interpretable
Discussion
This study examined the effects of two randomly assigned substance-related terms on individuals’ perceptions about whether someone with alcohol/drug problems is personally culpable, a social threat, able to self-regulate substance use behavior, and should be subjected to more punitive vs. therapeutic measures. Exposure to the two terms was not found to evoke differential judgments regarding the individual being a social threat or whether he should be directed to various forms of treatment.
Conclusions
Results from this study suggest it may matter how we refer to individuals with substance-related conditions and that use of, and exposure to, the “abuser” label may inadvertently elicit and perpetuate stigmatizing attitudes. Because such a low proportion of individuals with these costly and harmful conditions access treatment and cite stigma as a major barrier (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2008), a worthwhile public health policy goal would be to eradicate or
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank John W. Finney, Ph.D., William L. White, MA, Jerrold F. Rosenbaum, MD, Julie D. Yeterian, BA, and Sarah Dow, BA for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.
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This study was funded by Massachusetts General Hospital Institutional Grant #020753.