Internalized stigma in methadone maintenance therapy - a portuguese survey.

Introduction: Mental illness-related stigma creates serious barriers to access employment, education, housing, health and social care. There are different types of stigma, one of them is self or internalized stigma. Drug addiction is one of the most discriminated diseases in psychiatry, in many levels - structural, interpersonal and intrapersonal. Objectives: With this work we aim to study the internalized stigma and quality of life in the context of Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) in a Portuguese sample. Methods: We conduct a survey at Centro de Resposta Integrada Porto Ocidental (Porto, Portugal); it consisted in three parts: 1) sociodemographics; 2) the Interalized Stigma of Mental Illness scale (ISMI); 3) the World Health Organization Quality of Life Instruments - Bref. We ask all the patients on MMT (low and high-risk programmes) to answer the questionnaire. For statistical analysis we use the Excel software and use a regression analysis. Results: 53 patients participated in our study; the average age was 43 years old and 92% were male. The majority was in a weekly MMT, 74% for more than five years. All the dimensions of the ISMI (social withdrawal, stereotype endorsement, alienation, discrimination experience, stigma resistance) scored low self-stigma (< 2.5 points). The quality of life was on average bad and it was associated with unemployment, without association with internalized stigma. Conclusions: In contrast to earlier findings, we found that MMT patients show low self-stigma. There are several possible explanations for these results, such as the Self-Selection bias. Our data thus need to be interpreted with caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]