Target audience and instructional level of this course:
foundational
There is no known conflict of interest or commercial support related to this CE program.
TRAINING
This credit course is designed for social workers, psychologists, counselors, therapists, nurses and other health care professionals, and is at the intermediate instructional level.
The first author (ELG) developed the Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) intervention, and has received income from the MORE treatment manual (Garland, 2013) and therapist trainings.
Contemporary advances in addiction neuroscience have paralleled increasing interest in the ancient mental training practice of mindfulness meditation as a potential therapy for addiction. In the past decade, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been studied as a treatment for an array addictive behaviors, including drinking, smoking, opioid misuse, and use of illicit substances like cocaine and heroin. This article reviews current research evaluating MBIs as a treatment for addiction, with a focus on findings pertaining to clinical outcomes and biobehavioral mechanisms. Studies indicate that MBIs reduce substance misuse and craving by modulating cognitive, affective, and psychophysiological processes integral to self-regulation and reward processing. This integrative review provides the basis for manifold recommendations regarding the next wave of research needed to firmly establish the efficacy of MBIs and elucidate the mechanistic pathways by which these therapies ameliorate addiction. Issues pertaining to MBI treatment optimization and sequencing, dissemination and implementation, dose–response relationships, and research rigor and reproducibility are discussed.