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Anabolic steroid users’ attitudes towards physicians
Article first published online: 24 JUN 2004
DOI: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2004.00781.x
Additional Information
How to Cite
Pope, H. G., Kanayama, G., Ionescu-Pioggia, M. and Hudson, J. I. (2004), Anabolic steroid users’ attitudes towards physicians. Addiction, 99: 1189–1194. doi: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2004.00781.x
Publication History
- Issue published online: 20 JUL 2004
- Article first published online: 24 JUN 2004
- Submitted 22 December 2003; initial review completed 27 February 2004; final version accepted 16 March 2004
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Keywords:
- Anabolic steroids;
- attitudes;
- physicians;
- substance abuse;
- weight-lifting
ABSTRACT
Aims To assess anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) users’ trust in the knowledge and advice of physicians.
Design Interviews of AAS users and non-users.
Setting Research offices.
Participants Eighty weight-lifters (43 AAS users, 37 non-users) recruited by advertisement in Massachusetts and Florida, USA.
Measurements Personal interviews and questionnaire responses, including subjects’ ratings of physicians’ knowledge regarding various health- and drug-related topics. AAS users also rated their level of trust in various sources of information about AAS.
Findings Both groups of subjects gave physicians high ratings on knowledge about general health, cigarette smoking, alcohol, and conventional illicit drugs, but gave physicians markedly and significantly lower ratings on knowledge about AAS. When rating sources of information on AAS, users scored physicians as no more reliable than their friends, Internet sites, or the person(s) who sold them the steroids. Forty percent of users trusted information on AAS from their drug dealers at least as much as information from any physician that they had seen, and 56% had never revealed their AAS use to any physician.
Conclusion AAS users show little trust in physicians’ knowledge about AAS, and often do not disclose their AAS use to physicians. These attitudes compromise physicians’ ability to educate or treat AAS users. Physicians can respond to these problems by learning more about AAS and by maintaining a high index of suspicion when evaluating athletic male patients.