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Sociodemographic Characteristics and the Stigmatization of Prescription Opioid Addiction
Kimberly Goodyear1, David Chavanne
1Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, Department of Behavioral and Social Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA (KG); Section on Clinical Psychoneuroendocrinology and Neuropsychopharmacology, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; and National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA (KG); Department of Economics, Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA (DC).
Objectives:
The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between participants' sociodemographic characteristics and the degree to which they stigmatize people with an opioid addiction.
Methods:
A randomized, between-subjects case vignette study (n = 2605) was conducted with a nationwide online survey. We investigated how the stigmatization toward a hypothetical individual who misused prescription opioids differed across participants' sociodemographic factors (ie, age, gender, education, race, and income).
Results:
Our results showed that study participants who were male, white, low-income, college graduates, and younger rated the hypothetical individual with an opioid addiction with lower stigma. In addition, we showed that participant gender moderated the relationship between information given about initiation of opioid use (received prescription opioids from a doctor vs took prescription opioids from a friend) and opioid stigma perceptions.
Conclusions:
Our results support previous findings that stigmatizing attitudes towards drug use vary across participant sociodemographic characteristics. The findings from our study provide a better understanding of how stigmatizing attitudes towards prescription opioid use differ across sociodemographic characteristics and can serve to improve negative perceptions of those with an opioid addiction.
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