Giving and receiving social support in online substance use disorder forums: How self-efficacy moderates effects on relapse.
Yan Liu, Rachel Kornfield, Bret R Shaw and 3 others
PMID 31901364WHAT IT FOUND
In an online substance use recovery forum, receiving more emotional support was associated with less drug use at follow-up.
Giving support alone was not associated with lower use, and effects on drinking depended on confidence in recovery.
Key findings
01Receiving more emotional support was associated with reduced drug use at six and 12 months, but not with risky drinking.
02Receiving informational support, and giving emotional or informational support, were not associated with substance use outcomes.
03At 12 months, the link between support giving and risky drinking depended on confidence in abstinence: higher confidence plus more informational support was associated with less risky drinking, while lower confidence plus more emotional support was associated with less risky drinking.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
No random assignment; associations cannot be treated as effects of support. Of 231 forum posters, 189 completed the six-month survey and 135 completed the 12-month survey, so later outcomes are based on fewer participants. Support giving was measured only in the forum, and for high-volume posters only 23 messages were sampled. Support reception was self-reported and included peers offline as well as online. Confidence in abstinence was measured with a single item. A-CHESS included multiple components besides the forum, so the forum alone cannot be separated. The support-giving moderation findings were for risky drinking at 12 months and not for drug use.
Declared interests
The article is tagged as supported by NIH extramural research; no author conflict-of-interest declaration is provided.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that online peer support causes reduced substance use. The study was observational, with no random assignment, and support giving had no main effects; the confidence-based findings were moderation analyses of risky drinking only.