Using mindfulness to develop health education strategies for blood borne virus prevention in injecting drug use

Aims: Prevention education has had limited success in reducing transmission of blood borne virus among people who inject drugs. Innovative approaches to prevention education are required.

Method: This study used video recordings of injecting episodes and interviews with participants reviewing their video recordings to explore the concept of mindlessness as a new tool for prevention education.

Findings: The data demonstrate elements of mindlessness in participants’ injecting practice. Participants were unable to provide detailed description of their practice, could not recall the origin of their practices, described limited sensitivity to the environment around them and described learned behaviours ‘dropping out of mind’.

Conclusions: Although potentially useful as a prevention tool, prevention messages using mindlessness concepts should be developed in collaboration with injecting drug users to avoid judgmental or alienating messages. Finally, the use of these video recordings themselves can be a powerful education tool given the very hidden and stigmatized nature of injecting drug use.