According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 48.7 million people aged 12 or older (17.3%) had substance use disorder (SUD) in a given year. Despite the prevalence of SUD, many people do not seek treatment due to barriers like a lack of resources and stigma. In particular, stigma can lead to treatment avoidance or even discriminatory policies that impede resources. Therefore, access to recovery education can be an invaluable tool for dismantling stigma to support access to treatment and recovery.
At Driftwood Recovery, we know forming healthy attachments in yourself and with others can turn clinical insight into action. The challenge of stigma can impair your connection to yourself and others. When you feel less than because of internal and external experiences with stigma, it becomes difficult to make healthy choices. If you are overwhelmed by negative thoughts and feelings, there is no space to learn and grow. Therefore, uncovering insight for self-love and understanding starts with opening yourself up to learning and growing.
Recovery education is an integral part of connection and recovery. Through recovery education, you can build tools that support deeper self-awareness and self-understanding. With greater awareness and understanding, you can connect to yourself and others to foster positive thinking and behavior. Seeking recovery education can be fundamental to resilience post-treatment and maintaining your recovery.
Yet, you may question what recovery education is. How can recovery education dismantle stigma internally and externally? Expanding your awareness of recovery education can offer insight into the importance of recovery education for shifting the way you see yourself and how you engage in the world.
What Is Recovery Education?
According to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, health literacy originally encompassed basic literacy skills like reading, writing, and numeracy in a medical context. However, health literacy has shifted and expanded to consider a wide range of individual, social, and cognitive competencies. Today’s health literacy also encompasses recovery education, as addiction can have significant health consequences for you and society.
Access to health literacy is valuable to the well-being of all individuals. Low health literacy is common among groups like older adults, low education, the socioeconomically disadvantaged, and ethnic minorities. However, health literacy can be particularly beneficial to recovery education as those with SUD and co-occurring conditions often have low health literacy.
Understanding the Impact of Stigma on Recovery
As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notes, stigma is the relationship between an attribute and stereotypes that suggest you have undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors. Addiction stigma is often coupled with public, structural, and self-stigmatized beliefs. For example, public stigma views those with SUD as more dangerous, unpredictable, and responsible for their disorder. As a result of public stigma, self-stigma often develops and further harms your well-being. For instance, public beliefs contribute to the perpetuation of negative thoughts and self-talk that erodes your self-esteem, self-worth, and self-efficacy.
Listed below are the different types of stigma:
- Structural
- Laws, policies, and regulations cause intentional and unintentional discrimination
- Limits access to opportunities and resources
- Increases poor physical and psychological health outcomes
- Limits access to opportunities and resources
- Laws, policies, and regulations cause intentional and unintentional discrimination
- Public stigma
- Prejudice is formed from stereotypes about a person or group
- Stereotyping leads to discrimination
- Views substance use as a choice
- This leads the public to blame people with SUD for their condition
- Decreases support for recovery options
- This leads the public to blame people with SUD for their condition
- Prejudice is formed from stereotypes about a person or group
- Self-stigma
- You internalize negative stereotypes about yourself
- You perceive yourself as flawed, unworthy of love, belonging, and connection
- Decreases help-seeking behavior
- You perceive yourself as flawed, unworthy of love, belonging, and connection
- You internalize negative stereotypes about yourself
Addiction stigma changes how others see you, how you see yourself, and how you are treated. Moreover, public, self, and structural stigma contribute to isolation from yourself and others. When you feel disconnected from yourself and others, your self-esteem, self-worth, and motivation to maintain recovery erodes. Looking at the impact of stigma on your psychological well-being showcases the importance of recovery education.
The Value of Recovery Education for Reducing Stigma
Some of the tools in treatment and recovery that can help confront and combat stigma include psychoeducational groups. Through psychoeducation, you can gain insight into your disorder and its impact on you and your life. Moreover, psychoeducation in recovery education can also:
- Increase awareness and understanding of maladaptive patterns
- Teach you how to engage in adaptive strategies
Additionally, recovery education tools give you more insight into yourself, which empowers you to take control of your recovery. Moreover, recovery education supports:
- Social inclusion with your loved ones and the wider community
- An environment that encourages understanding, knowledge, and skill development
- Challenges and dismantles stigma
- Establish and achieve life and recovery goals
In addition to psychoeducation, recovery education can also include family education. Through family education, you and your loved ones can gain insight into your SUD and its impact on well-being and relationships to heal the whole family.
Healing the Whole Family With Family Education
Addiction changes the whole family system by disrupting family dynamics, increasing relationship conflict, and fracturing families. Understanding family systems and SUD allows you to explore the impact of SUD on the whole family to heal. Through family education, you and your loved ones can understand each other better and rebuild connections for healthy interdependence and mutual support to thrive in life together. Now, you and your family can foster unity to learn and grow together.
Finding Recovery Education in Alumni at Driftwood Recovery
At Driftwood Recovery, our alumni family is a peer-driven network designed to support you and your loved ones. With access to post-treatment services and resources, you can be empowered to continue learning and building on skills to live an independent and fulfilling life. Through holistic care, you can heal in mind, body, and spirit as you understand how stigma impacts your recovery. No matter where you are on your recovery journey, a strong alumni program allows you and your family to continue learning, growing, and sharing in sustained recovery.
Stigma increases barriers to information, knowledge, connection, and sustained recovery. However, recovery education like psychoeducation and family education can support self-awareness, self-understanding, independence, mutually supportive relationships, and lasting recovery. Through a peer-driven alumni program, you can access services and resources for education and connection. Supportive relationships are valuable for enhancing self-esteem, self-worth, and adaptive coping. The connections you build with loved ones and peers in alumni work to support health literacy for physical and psychological well-being. Thus, at Driftwood Recovery, we are dedicated to service, support, compassion, respect, encouragement, and accountability in a vibrant alumni program for a courageous life in sustained recovery. Call us at (512) 759-8330 to learn how recovery education can support your recovery.