“It’s a Bit of a Double-Edged Sword”: Motivation and Personal Impact of Bereaved Mothers’ Advocacy for Drug Policy Reform

Abstract

North America’s overdose crisis is an urgent public health issue that has resulted in thousands of deaths. As the crisis began to take hold across Canada in 2016, bereaved parents, mainly mothers, emerged as vocal advocates for drug policy reform and harm reduction, using their stories to challenge the stigma of drug-related death. In 2017, we launched a qualitative research partnership with leading family organizations in Canada, conducting interviews with 43 mothers whose children had died from substance use, to understand their experiences of drug policy advocacy. Our findings showed that participants’ motivations for engaging in advocacy were rooted in their experiences of grief, and that advocacy led to feelings of empowerment and connection to others. Our research suggests that advocacy can be cathartic and associated with healing from grief, but that “going public” in sharing a family story of substance use death can also have a considerable personal cost.