Ending Stigma
Posted on November 16, 2021
By Tom Horvath, PhD
Addiction professionals say they're working toward ending stigma surrounding addiction, but they also tend to promote addiction as a disease. These activities are contradictory. By promoting addiction as a disease they play into the general tendency to perceive in-groups (“normies”) and out-groups (those with the disease). Instead of emphasizing that “addiction is a chronic brain disease” or “treatment works,” the following ideas, depending on the context, would make much more helpful and less stigmatizing messages:
You might also be interested in: The Stigma of Addiction and the Inadvertent Contribution of the Recovery Community
1. Addictive problems range from very mild to very severe.
2. Most addictive problems are not in the severe or very severe range.
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