Destigmatising Mental Health & Addiction
Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. For people who struggle with substance misuse, stigma remains one of the biggest barriers to seeking addiction treatment. People living with substance misuse will often hear labels such as “addict” or “junkie” or “user” these are incredibly negative terms and do nothing to improve issues such as self-esteem or sense of self-worth. Even within the health industry terms used to describe processes and outcomes can be laden with negative values “dirty” and “clean” are often terms used to describe urine tests results. We here at CIRP are committed to using language that is non stigmatizing and to help family members and others understand the damaging effects negative labelling has on recovery.