Examining stigma relating to substance use and contextual factors in social media discussions.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Stigma associated with substance use can have severe negative consequences for physical and mental health and serve as a barrier to treatment. Yet, research on stigma processes and stigma reduction interventions is limited.

Aim

We use a social media dataset to examine: 1) the nature of stigma-related experience related to substance use; and 2) salient affective and temporal factors in the use of three substances: alcohol, cannabis, and opioids.

Methods

We harvested several years of data pertaining to three substances - alcohol, cannabis, and opioids - from Reddit, a popular social networking platform. For Part I, we selected posts based on stigma-related keywords, performed content analysis, and rendered word clouds to examine the nature of stigma associate

SUBMITTER: Chen AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9948814 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature