Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2022
Although health care is generally designed to help people, it has the potential to effectively impede recovery for people using substances by obvious and subtle discrimination. Stigmatizing attitudes among health professionals are common, regularly expected by people who use substances and potentially reduce quality of delivered clinical care. The power gradient that drives stigma and discriminatory behavior is particularly palpable in the healthcare setting and prevalent within different clinical situations like emergency medicine, primary care, and the psychiatric ward as within language. Comprising the current evidence of interventions, specific clinical settings and language regarding substance use stigma, we suggest recommendations for changes in clinical practice. Professionals need to avoid inflicting very real harm by increasing shame and reducing self-worth through stigmatizing settings, language, and concepts. Reducing substance use stigma is an integral and profoundly important part of caring for people who use substances and should be considered as such.
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