Reducing the stigma

By Ashley Rowland

February 2025

Approximately 250 people attended the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing’s Feb. 19 screening of the award-winning documentary Inheritance, the first event in the school’s yearlong commemoration of its 90th anniversary. 

Inheritance follows the struggles of a boy growing up in rural Appalachia in a family struggling with opioid addiction and poverty. The film screening was followed by a panel discussion with the film’s co-director and central character, now a young man the same age as many of the Loyola students in the audience.  

In her opening remarks, Dean Lorna Finnegan said the opioid epidemic is a pressing public health crisis that has touched nearly every community across the country. The crisis highlights the impact of social determinants of health—factors like poverty, housing instability, and lack of access to health care that lead to health disparities. 

Nurses, she noted, see firsthand how those challenges shape the health of individuals, families, and communities. 

“Nurses are often the first and most trusted advocates for people navigating these complex challenges,” she said. “We have the responsibility to destigmatize mental illness, provide holistic care, ensure that no one struggles in silence, and advocate for a future where health is a right, not a privilege.” 

Inheritance, filmed over 11 years, tells the story of Curtis Ramsey as he grew up in an extended family where drugs were openly used and several relatives died from overdosing. The documentary has been shown at a number of film festivals and received several awards, including the Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Festival.  

The film screening, held in the Damen Student Center, drew Loyola Nursing students and faculty, as well as faculty emeriti and others from across the Loyola community. Leah McClellan, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and Loyola Nursing faculty member who studies neighborhood-level influences and experiences in the opioid crisis, moderated a panel discussion after the screening. 

After the screening, Ramsey and co-director Matt Moyer answered questions about how the documentary had impacted their lives and how policy changes could help drug-dependent communities like Ramsey’s Ohio hometown.  

Ramsey, who entered the foster care system several times as a child, encouraged future nurses in the crowd to talk candidly with patients struggling with trauma and opioid abuse, making sure they are aware of the potential consequences of drug use. He also noted the importance of having a support system—someone who believes in you—for those seeking to escape the generational impacts of poverty and substance abuse. 

Moyer called on the audience to help reduce the stigma surrounding drug abuse and said filming Inheritance had challenged his assumptions about the issues depicted in the film. 

“I certainly brought blind spots to this whole endeavor,” he said, urging audience members to be honest, open, and question their own assumptions.  

That, he added, was the point of Inheritance. 

“You have to feel before you can act, and that’s the spirit behind this film,” he said. “You have to feel something so we can address as a community, and a country, some of these issues.”