Provide hope and support, tempered with compassion

Either as a choice or as a disease, justifying the anger in the first instance and pity in the second.

- FROM B1

either as a choice or as a disease, justifying the anger in the first instance and pity in the second. Research consistently shows that negative attitudes towards substance users among health professionals are common.

Such attitudes are associated with reduced empathy and engagement, withholding of treatment services, and poorer treatment outcomes.

This stigmatisation — marked by labelling, stereotyping and discrimination — towards people with substance use disorders often surpasses the stigma directed at patients with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which are themselves already highly stigmatised.

This was very much the case with the public as well — as we found in a study in 2023 that examined the attitudes in Singapore towards mental disorders.

"People were more likely to perceive a person who abuses alcohol as being weak, not sick, and dangerous and unpredictable as compared with (those with) other mental health conditions examined in our survey," said Associate Professor Mythily Subramaniam of the Institute of Mental Health, who led the study.