Trusting Medicine, Doctors, and Herself: Incarcerated Women’s Non-medical Prescription Drug Use

• In Event: 480 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Incarceration and Health

Abstract

Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in 2013 with 43,982 drug overdose deaths in the United States. Of these, 22,767 (51.8%) were related to prescription drugs (CDC 2015). The number of deaths resulting from an overdose of prescription painkillers among non-Hispanic white persons increased 430% between 1999 and 2013. Almost two million Americans, aged 12 or older, either abused or were dependent on opioid painkillers in 2013 (CDC 2015). Patients who comply with doctors’ orders do so because they either trust the doctor, the institution of medicine, and/or the government who regulates Rx drug use. As such, addiction produced through prescription drugs may be understood as a product of trust at institutional, interactional, and individual levels. By focusing on a particularly vulnerable population, incarcerated women, we analyze their articulations of knowledge and trust in these multi-layered social actors. The data for this study was collected through 168 anonymous surveys and forty semi-structured interviews with female inmates at a women’s correctional center in Missouri. Based upon this data, we piece together how these women began to use prescription drugs without medical supervision, how they understood their use at the time, and how they have come to understand their use post facto. In this research, we found that trust played a significant role in mediating these interpretations and influencing women’s behavior. Trust operated primarily at these three levels: institutional, interactional, and self-trust.

Authors

• Michelle Hannah Smirnova, University of Missouri - Kansas City

• Jennifer Owens, University of Missouri - Kansas City