This study is so irritating. Its big revelation is that mental-health workers, who are more likely to encounter addicts on a mandatory-treatment basis, hold more negative attitudes toward them than the general public. The paper declares, without sufficient evidence, that this “stigma” is “a primary barrier” to treatment and that addressing stigma is “critical to stemming the opioid epidemic.” The paper lectures about “power imbalances” and recommends targeting anti-stigma education especially toward groups with higher proportions of men. Mental Health First Aid is suggested in the article as an anti-stigma program. On its website, it states, “Science has confirmed that addiction is a chronic brain disease that can happen to anyone.” This has not, in fact, been confirmed by science. The brain-disease model of addiction is highly contested. It all reads as so condescending. You have academics looking down on the mental-health workers on the front lines working with addicts, thinking they’re so much more enlightened. It’s not the addicts’ fault they continue to use; it’s the mental-health workers’ attitudes toward them! If only they received more “anti-stigma education,” outcomes might improve! Article: Study: MHFA:

Middle Tennessee is experiencing a baby boom even as the national birth rate remains near a historic low. At one Midtown Nashville hospital, a baby is born every 75 minutes. Tennessee has now seen four consecutive years of increasing births, reaching its highest annual total since 2008. Much of the growth has been concentrated in Middle Tennessee’s rapidly growing suburban counties, driven in part by an influx of millennials moving to the region. That includes @SwipeWright and me. We moved here from California several years ago, and our baby is due in January.