Managing Mental Health Problems in Everyday Life: Drug Treatment Clients’ Self-Care Strategies

Abstract

Little is understood about the self-care activities undertaken by drug treatment clients. Using data from a qualitative study of drug treatment and mental health we identify the self-care practices of drug treatment clients diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Seventy-seven participants were interviewed in four sites across Australia. Participants described a range of self-care practices for mental health including: self-medication, seeking social support, physical exercise, counselling-derived techniques, keeping busy and other less common strategies. These findings show that drug treatment clients undertake similar self-care practices to the general population and illicit drug users and that these activities echo beneficial practices identified in the research literature. The results suggest opportunities for service providers to work with clients on self-care activities that may improve mental health. Tensions between consumer and professional views of self-care, and the limits to encouraging self-care as a substitute for treatment, are discussed.

Drug use in the year after prison

“…Third, the weak correlation between illegal and legal drug use, and between health indicators and illegal drugs, tend to disconfirm the claim that illegal drug use is often a type of self-medication for health problems. This contrasts with other research where illegal drug use has been found to substitute for therapeutic remedies and legal drugs, particularly in low-income or reentry populations (Khantzian, 1985;Klee and Reid, 1998;Christiani et al, 2008;Holt and Treloar, 2008). We interpret this result in the health policy environment of our Massachusetts field site, where health insurance is extended to low-income residents through an expanded Medicaid program.…”

“…Self-medication with illegal drugs is of particular concern for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups (Khantzian, 1985). Several observational studies of homeless youth, for example, find substance use was reported as an adaptive response to mental illness, pain, and survival on the streets (Klee and Reid, 1998;Christiani et al, 2008;Holt and Treloar, 2008). In the analysis below we study the possibility of self-medication by estimating correlations among random effects across equations for legal and illegal drug use.…”

“The Drug Use Unfortunately isn’t all Bad”: Chronic Disease Self-Management Complexity and Strategy Among Marginalized People Who Use Drugs

“…One explanation for why self-management support has rarely been explicitly applied among PWUD is because of (mis)conceptions that they are either “deviants” who choose not to self-manage or that active drug use renders them incapable of self-management ( Gowan et al, 2012 ; Szott, 2015 ). Prior studies describing self-care among PWUD have mainly focused on how people manage their drug use, especially the role of harm reduction practices ( Boucher et al, 2017 ; Gowan et al, 2012 ; Greenspan et al, 2011 ), while other studies have focused on self-managing specific health issues ( Holt & Treloar, 2008 ; Smith et al, 2014 ; Wilson et al, 2018 ). However, one qualitative study of 28 people in Florida, USA, considered self-care more broadly, finding that street drug users actively engaged in self-care practices such as eating healthy or exercising ( Drumm et al, 2005 ).…”

“Raw juicing” – an online study of the home manufacture of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) for injection in contemporary performance and image enhancement (PIED) culture

“…Fora members have been described in studies as disseminating pragmatic harm reduction tactics (Boyer et al, 2007, Lapen, Macalino, & Hibberd, 2008Friedman et al, 2007;Holt and Treloar, 2008) and this study sought to explore the harm reduction measures, perceptions of risk and injecting practices of homebrewers in this regard. Recent netnographic research has underscored the need for a shift of policy focus away from prohibition to facilitate enhanced knowledge of safer use of PIED thereby promote harm reduction and better public health outcomes (Underwood, 2017).…”