Stigma and Boundaries for People Who Use Drugs
This 2-hour webinar will introduce the concepts of social inequalities faced by people who use drugs, the stigma they experience, and how this impacts their ability to access services. Workshop participants are provided the opportunity to explore how current and former substance users experience the impact of stigma, which can permeate nearly every aspect of their lives including relationships with family, friends, employers, and health care providers.
How internalized stigma can lead to harmful behaviors is also explored to promote more effective engagement skills with individuals who are actively using drugs. The hope is that through the evaluation of one’s own potential role in perpetuating drug-related stigma, providers will develop new strategies for building more authentic and productive relationships with clients.
Objectives
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
1. Recall the meaning of stigma and discrimination.
2. Recognize some ways in which drug users experience stigma.
3. Discuss ideas to address stigma in the context of harm reduction and providing services.
4. Identify strategies to challenge stigma in the workplace.
This webinar will review basic information about depressant use with a focus on why people use depressants, how they impact a person, and harm reduction and drug treatment options. The training will provide an overview of commonly used depressants and explain what they look like, how much they cost, how they affect the brain and risk factors for health. Participants will learn how tolerance and routes of administration impact the effects of drugs. Participants will learn how to use Harm Reduction methods to engage with people who use drugs and better understand their experience.
By the end of the training, workshop participants will be able to:
- Use a Harm Reduction framework to identify risks and develop strategies for engaging People Who Use Drugs (PWUD) in care, retaining PWUD in care, and for reduction of drug-related harms
- Understand how tolerance, route of administration, and Drug, Set and Setting impact the way drugs affect people who use drugs
- Describe the effects of drugs to service providers and PWUD
- Understand the continuum of drug use and how stigma, race, socioeconomic status, gender identity impact both people’s vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm
