Page 44 - December 2021

A Mental Health and Wellness Message from Origins Behavioral Health
Building a healthier environment for those with substance use issues
My daughter was around five years old when she asked me what epidemiology was. In true Dyben family form, I wrote a song to explain at least part of it. The song is called “The Epidemiological Triad Theme Song.” Today everyone in my family can sing it. If you meet me and ask, I’ll be happy to sing it for you, too.
The gist of the song is that when a host (such as a person, horse or bird) is infected by an agent (such as a virus), the environment has a dramatic impact on how bad the host’s condition gets and how much
the agent spreads to others. This principle is true of nearly all public health conditions and diseases such as AIDS, COVID-19 and addiction.
The difficulty in grasping how our environment keeps addic- tion roaring through our country and annihilating individuals and families is that we have been looking at the wrong environ- mental factors.
The only way we will truly create an environment that will serve to curb the devastation of addiction, overdose and death is to face what really keeps addiction alive and killing people: us.
The collective “we.” Ourselves.
You and me and all of the rest of us.
One might easily respond to such a statement with “What?
How dare you! I’m not the one putting drugs in my body, so I can- not be part of the problem!” I understand that sentiment. When
I say that “we” are a big part of the problem, it might sound like I am trying to assign blame. I am not.
However, what we can and must recognize is that we are all a part of the environment that addiction flourishes in, and what we have done up to now has not been working. In truth, much of what we do makes it worse. And before we give in to the temp- tation to shrug off this “we factor” to bad public policy and other realities that we can distance ourselves from, we have to face the reality that one thing that we all have personal responsibility for is stigma.
What is stigma?
Stigma has been defined as negative stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination toward a particular group. Essentially, when we harbor negative thoughts and feelings about people with ad- diction, it will inevitably result in negative behaviors toward them both in what we say and how we treat them.
The reason this is so devastating is that it creates a barrier to people seeking treatment. They are, in turn, left without a solu- tion, which results in addiction progressing uninhibited, with devastating consequences.
This doesn’t only impact those people who are afflicted with the disease. Stigma also brands the proverbial scarlet letter A on family members and loved ones, who suffer right along with the person with an addiction. These family members and/or loved ones are clothed with a sense of shame, resulting in isolation and a reluctance to ask for help.
DR. JOHN DYBEN
44 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ DECEMBER 2021