Making sense of drug use and dependence—A scoping review of mass media interventions intended to reduce stigma towards people who use drugs

Background: People who use drugs face entrenched stigma, which fosters shame, restricts service access, and exacerbates inequalities. The use of mass media in anti-stigma interventions offers an opportunity to challenge stigmatising attitudes at scale. There are, however, inconsistencies in messaging approaches used in mass media anti-stigma interventions, and how authors conceptualise and measure ‘stigma’. Methods: This scoping review maps literature on the development and/or evaluation of mass media interventions intended to reduce stigma towards people who use drugs. We systematically searched seven databases for reports about: (i) people who use drugs, (ii) stigma, (iii) mass media. We charted data about intervention (i) subjects and recipients, (ii) format, (iii) authors, (iv) content; and (v) conceptualisation and measurement of stigma. We narratively synthesised findings with qualitative content analyses. Results: From 14,256 records, we included 49 reports about 35 interventions. 25/35 were from the last five years and 19/35 were from the United States. Intended recipients included the public and/or specified sub-populations, often including healthcare workers. Most interventions were intended to reduce stigma towards people with patterns of drug use perceived to be problematic, as opposed to people who use drugs in general. Interventions ranged from single pieces of media to complex multi-format campaigns. People who use(d) drugs contributed to 22/35 interventions. Professionals working in medical disciplines co-authored 29/35 interventions. Intervention content often had a medical focus, describing dependence as a ‘disease’ or medical issue, and emphasised the benefits of recovery. Other interventions, however, criticised medical framings. In some interventions drug use and people who use drugs were described in markedly negative terms. ‘Stigma’ was often under-theorised, and measurement approaches were inconsistent, with 42 instruments used to measure phenomena associated with stigma across 19 quantitative evaluations. Conclusion: We found inconsistencies in approaches to reduce and measure stigma, potentially reflecting different motivations for intervention development. The primary motivation of many interventions was seemingly to promote drug service engagement and recovery.