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Biomedical subjects

Shannon Gwin Mitchell

Publications and source records attributed to Shannon Gwin Mitchell.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Getting clean and harm reduction: adversarial or complementary issues for injection drug users.

Many contemporary HIV prevention interventions targeting injection drug users (IDUs) have been implemented using Harm Reduction as a theoretical framework. Among drug-using individuals, however, the abstinence-based "getting clean" models espoused by Narcotics Anonymous and other widely adopted approaches to drug treatment are often more readily accepted. This paper describes an ethnographic examination of the ideological dichotomy between Harm Reduction and abstinence-based "getting clean" treatment model which emerged during the piloting phase of an HIV prevention intervention in Baltimore City, Maryland, USA. This paper describes how the conflict was identified and what changes were made to the intervention to help resolve the participants' dichotomous thinking concerning their substance abuse issues.

Anthropology, Cultural↗

The impact of drug use on perceptions of credibility in indigenous outreach workers.

The authors conducted an investigation of perceptions of outreach worker credibility using the social network members (N = 20) of indigenous outreach workers in an HIV/AIDS prevention intervention. The network members included in the study received semistructured interviews following the program's completion. Outreach workers who were not actively using illicit drugs were more likely to be described as credible than were those who were using drugs. In general, drug use negatively affected perceptions of credibility via damaged trust in the outreach worker's relationship with his or her network member. Results indicate the complexity of using indigenous drug users as outreach workers, the potential negative perceptions concerning hypocritical behavior, and the need to evaluate social interventions from the standpoint of indirect participants.

Adult↗

Caplan, community, and Critical Incident Stress Management.

Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), a comprehensive crisis intervention program, is examined from the perspective of Community Psychology. Because CISM adheres to the 5 Principles of Community Psychology and was designed to be adopted and implemented as a systematic intervention embedded within an organization, it is argued that CISM is best understood and evaluated in context as a prevention program rather than simply a crisis intervention "treatment." Recommendations are made for evaluating CISM as a comprehensive intervention-using an Action Research framework encompassing methodological pluralism and multiple stakeholders' definitions of success.

Community Mental Health Services↗