Stout Joshua H, Fleury-Steiner Benjamin
Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV, USA.
University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
Omega (Westport). 2023 Sep 19:302228231203355. doi: 10.1177/00302228231203355.
Research has given limited attention to family and friends bereaved by a drug-overdose death. To examine the ways in which stigma may uniquely impact the grieving processes of the bereaved, a thematic analysis of 35 semistructured in-depth interviews with family members and adult peers who lost a loved one to an overdose was conducted. Our findings demonstrate that the bereaved experience stigmatization after their loss. Specifically, respondents emphasized stigmatizing interactions with law enforcement, alienation from friends and family, a lack of social support, exchanges that enforced feeling rules, and being confronted by narratives of blame and individual choice as contributing to the degrees of stigmatization they experienced. Our findings highlight how bereavement becomes stigmatized to varying degrees through multiple interactions that have a compounding effect on mourners. We refer to this process as stigmatized bereavement, whereby the frequency of such interactions informs the degree of stigmatization the bereaved faces.
研究对因药物过量死亡而失去亲人的家人和朋友关注有限。为了探究污名化可能如何独特地影响丧亲者的悲伤过程,我们对35名失去亲人因药物过量死亡的家庭成员和成年同龄人进行了半结构化深度访谈,并进行了主题分析。我们的研究结果表明,丧亲者在失去亲人后会经历污名化。具体而言,受访者强调与执法部门的污名化互动、与朋友和家人的疏远、社会支持的缺乏、强化情感规则的交流,以及因指责和个人选择的言论而受到的冲击,这些都导致了他们所经历的污名化程度。我们的研究结果凸显了丧亲如何通过多种互动在不同程度上被污名化,这些互动对哀悼者产生了叠加效应。我们将这个过程称为污名化丧亲,即此类互动的频率决定了丧亲者面临的污名化程度。