A Report on How Stigma Harms Youth Exposed to Parental Substance Use Disorder

Agnes Chen 2/5/222:16 PM

A New Path Forward: A Report on How Stigma Harms Youth exposed to Parental Substance Use Disorder and Recommendations for a New Path Forward

NEW REPORT: On February 3rd, Starlings Community released a FIRST of its kind report on how stigma impacts youth exposed to parental substance use disorder.

Approximately 1 in 6 youth are exposed to the stress and stigma of a parent's substance use disorder. These children/youth are at double the risk for depression, triple the risk for addiction, and are 8 out of 10 times more likely to die from suicide, compared to children not exposed to parental substance use disorder. However, these youth have not been acknowledged or prioritized within federal policies or recommendations and impacted youth are not offered proactive healing supports.

Canada is experiencing an opioid epidemic and a substance use crisis that is taking a devastating toll on families. Substance use disorders—whether fentanyl, methamphetamine, alcohol-related or other—are ravaging communities, taking lives, and perpetuating intergenerational trauma at significantly staggering rates.

Recently, Starlings Community released their report outlining the gap in current services and a comprehensive approach to supporting children affected by stress and stigma associated with a parent's substance use disorder. See the report here:

A NEW PATH FORWARD: A report on the harm stigma imposes on children exposed to parental substance use disorder, containing recommendations for carving a new path forward

Quick facts from the report:

Nearly 1 in 6 youth currently experience the stress and stigma of parental substance use disorder
1/10 people in Canada report being challenged by their substance use.
28% of males and 18% of females (with children younger than 13 years of age) self-reported problematic or risky alcohol use since 2020.
Children/youth exposed to parental substance use disorders are double the risk for depression, triple the risk for addiction, and are 8 out of 10 times more likely to die from suicide, compared to children not exposed to parental substance use.
In 2018, 70% of federally incarcerated women were parents of minor children.
Between 2016 and 2019, nearly 25,000 people died from substance use.
Canadian taxpayers finance $46 billion annually in healthcare, justice system and lost productivity costs due to substance use disorder

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Frank Sterle Jr.Member

Fortunately, the preconceived erroneous notion that addicts are simply weak-willed and/or have committed a moral crime is gradually dying. Hopefully, the stigma traditionally attached to substance addiction is also dying. It is increasingly commonly known that pharmaceutical corporations intentionally pushed their very addictive and profitable opiates — I call it the real moral crime — for which they got off relatively lightly, considering the resulting immense suffering and overdose death numbers. ...

I used to be one of those who, while sympathetic, would look down on those who’d ‘allowed’ themselves to become addicted to alcohol and illicit drugs. Yet, though I have not been personally affected by the opioid addiction/overdose crisis, I myself have suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related hyper-anxiety to have known, enjoyed and appreciated the great release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC.

Upon learning that serious life trauma, notably adverse childhood experiences, is very often behind the addict’s debilitating addiction, I began to understand ball-and-chain self-medicating: The greater the drug-induced euphoria or escape one attains from its use, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their sober reality, the more pleasurable that escape should be perceived. By extension, the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while sober, the greater the need for escape from reality, thus the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be.

2/7/225:47 PM

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