Facts and Personal Recovery Stories to Reduce Substance Use Disorder Stigma and Increase Support for Recovery Housing: a US Randomized Study

Substance use disorder (SUD) is a considerable threat to global public health and is considered a “public health crisis” in the USA. Despite the benefits of increased availability of effective SUD treatment, like recovery housing (RH), social stigma towards individuals with SUD and SUD services is a major obstacle in the establishment of such services. We designed an experiment ( N = 2721) with five experimental conditions including a control condition, an educational message about the effectiveness of RH, and a personal story from an individual in recovery delivered via identified written story, anonymous written story, or a video. We examine the effect of these interventions on social SUD stigma and political and financial behavior in support of RH. We find that written recovery stories can reduce social SUD stigma, but that none of our interventions affected political or financial behavior in support of RH, suggesting behavior may be exceedingly difficult to change.