Exploring Family Members’ Beliefs and Experiences of Supporting Relatives with Substance Use and Misuse within Black Communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Canada has become a home to a rapidly growing Black population, yet the escalating issue of psychoactive substance use and misuse within these communities in Canada presents a significant public health concern. Previous studies on substance misuse in Black communities often focused on individuals directly impacted by substance misuse, failing to capture family members’ experiences and perspectives of supporting individuals with substance misuse.\nAims: This study aimed to explore the experiences and perceptions of Black family members in Canada who support relatives with psychoactive substance misuse, as well as investigate their perspectives on available supportive resources within Black communities.\nMethods: Focused ethnography guided the study, using purposive sampling to recruit 26 participants in Southern Ontario. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews, and Leininger's four phases of ethnonursing qualitative data analysis were employed for primary data analysis.\nFindings: The overall findings highlighted a persistent and significant problem in Black communities. Participants’ cultural norms appeared to endorse moderate use of substances among older adult men during special occasions but disapproved of such use among women and young individuals. It noted that negative consequences such as school dropout, legal issues, and stigma were associated with substance misuse. Families often concealed relatives' substance use due to shame and culturally embarrassment, leading to barriers in seeking help. The study revealed a lack of culturally relevant resources, prompting some to seek help in their home countries.\nImplications: Implications for healthcare providers, especially nurses and addiction counsellors, are crucial in understanding the gender impact within Black communities, addressing the stigma associated with family members of those with substance misuse, and recognizing the importance of culturally supportive community resources, including implementation of community outreach and peer support programs to empower recovery.\nConclusions: This study revealed a persistent issue of psychoactive substance misuse, resulting in various consequences. Families often concealed substance misuse, creating barriers to seek help, with some resorting to seeking assistance from their home countries. The findings underscore the urgent need for culturally supportive resources in Canada to comprehensively address the issue of psychoactive substances and emphasize the importance of timely access to culturally relevant resources.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.017 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".