Understanding Addiction: Biopsychosocial Model

They propose that certain personality traits might predispose individuals to addiction. It’s not that having a particular personality guarantees addiction, but rather that some traits might make the siren song of substances or behaviors harder to resist. Without a comprehensive understanding of the various factors at play, you’d be like a sailor without a compass, adrift in a sea of symptoms and behaviors. Addiction theories provide that compass, guiding treatment approaches and informing public policy. A lot more is going on in clinical care than decisions as https://northiowatoday.com/2025/01/27/sober-house-rules-what-you-should-know-before-moving-in/ to what treatments to recommend, including personal, interpersonal, and institutional processes. Engel says a lot of interesting things about all these things in his 1997 paper and others around that time (Engel, 1980, 1982), and they can be considered as part of what is covered by the BPSM.

Addiction Theories: A Comprehensive Exploration of Substance Use Disorders

  • Gillett criticizes theories of decision-making that conceptualize choice as autonomous phenomenon only if inner mental states or networks cause it.
  • It’s as if we’re trying to fill a void with substances or behaviors, but the void is actually a black hole that just keeps growing.
  • Using all these theories may help you understand the complexity of substance use and why one theory/lens is generally not enough.
  • First, he describes a “weak” rights ethic, wherein individuals have the right to access good healthcare.
  • Action, subjective experience of action, and consequently responsibility for action is mediated by many factors, including psychological phenomenon such as an individual’s emotional processes.

The moral model suggests using a substance is a moral failing which will lead to a path of destruction. It views people who use substances as having a choice to use substances and judges them for using the substances. The same theory-shift that transformed biology also transformed neuroscience and cognitive psychology, enabling a coherent biopsychology. As to the domain of social interactions, there is no shortage of research programs on its major importance to our biopsychology in phylogenesis (Barrett, Henzi, & Barton, 2022) and ontogenesis (Blakemore, 2008).

  • It is very important to be respectful around all spiritual dimensions as it is very important to people.
  • They are examples of the rationale for expanding the BMM to the BPSM, in effect contributing content to the concept of ‘biopsychology’ or ‘psychological medicine’ within the BPSM.
  • First, the number of drug addicts in each brigade of the two drug rehabilitation centers was ranked, and then the number of people from each brigade was determined by implementing an equal proportion sampling strategy.
  • The model attributes key role to biological determinants and explains disease as a condition caused by external pathogens or disorders in the functions of organs and body systems.
  • A relatively new class of theories known as ‘embodied mind’, ‘embodied cognition’, or ‘4E cognition’, explicitly overturns dualism and are, therefore, potentially relevant to a revitalized BPSM.

Consequences of Impaired Cognitive Control

Addictions research using heroin-assisted treatment (HAT) trials such as the North American Opiate Medication Initiative (NAOMI) and similar HAT studies and programs in Europe are a striking, if not controversial example of an effort to embody a biopsychosocial systems approach. The objective of these trials is to investigate the benefits and risks of administering medically supervised, pharmaceutical-grade injectable heroin to chronic opiate Sober House Rules: What You Should Know Before Moving In users where other treatment options, such as methadone maintenance therapy, have failed. Notions of a pathologized self, deeply enmeshed with personal identity, may lead an individual to internally negotiate a relationship between the self and the brain (Dumit 2003). It may further challenge understandings of “accepted” identities, such as health seeking and rational, as opposed to “contested” identities, such as addict, intoxicated, and at-risk (Fry 2008). The latter may compromise an individual’s sense and experience of free will, being-in-the-world, perceptions of personal responsibility, and view abnormalities in dopamine pathways as fatalistic. Rates of substance use and dependence vary across, and even within, cultural and social groups (Wallace 1999; Wallace, Bachman, O’Malley et al. 2002).

Affect Dysregulation Model

New technologies, like advanced brain imaging techniques, may offer unprecedented insights into the neurological underpinnings of addiction. And as our society changes, new forms of addiction may emerge, challenging us to expand our understanding even further. Psychodynamic theory, on the other hand, is like an archaeological dig into our subconscious.

The Birth of a Revolutionary Model

Research designs relevant to the BPSM are those that examine the effects of psychological and social, as well as biological factors, on health outcomes (e.g. Lacombe, Armstrong, Wright, & Foster, 2019). Immediate findings are typically of correlations or associations, and control conditions of varying levels of stringency increase confidence in inference to causation. Multivariable regression models are applicable within the BMM, including biological variables only, but the expanded BPSM framework also accommodates inclusion of psychological and social variables, estimating their independent, additive, and interaction effects (e.g. Guloksuz et al., 2019). The biopsychosocial systems model implicitly calls for an integrative discussion in the ethics debate on substance use, decision-making, and responsibility.

biopsychosocial theory of addiction

This bias may be more pronounced in drug addicts with high self-appraisal and low self-acceptance. They tend to exaggerate their successes and contributions while avoiding acknowledging their failures and mistakes. This tendency reinforces their self-esteem but can impede their ability to confront problems and gain social acceptance.

Mental health disorders and addiction often go hand in hand, like peanut butter and jelly – except far less delicious and far more destructive. Depression, anxiety, PTSD – these conditions can both contribute to and be exacerbated by addiction. Giordano, A. L., Prosek, E. A., Stamman, J., Callahan, M. M., Loseu, S., Bevly, C. M., Cross, K., Woehler, E. S., Calzada, R.-M. R., & Chadwell, K.

BPSM compatible research studies were barely available when Engel proposed the new model in 1977. The first clinical trials of psychological therapies appeared in the 1970s, heralding what has become a very large-scale research program of developing and evaluating psychological interventions for a wide range of health conditions and their complications. The early finding that cognitive therapy for depression was effective, and moreover, more effective than an antidepressant medication (Rush, Beck, Kovacs, & Hollon, 1977), reinforced the signal that the BMM was not enough, at least not for modeling and treating depression. The social dimension is considered to be vitally important, it is the immediate interpersonal domain that is most proximal to the person who develops an addictive disorder. Who is in the social dimension includes, family, friends, workplace, social, exercise, the community of choice, leisure companions and faith community.

biopsychosocial theory of addiction

Neuroethics and the Brain Disease Model

In conclusion, the Psychological Model of addiction offers valuable insight into the role of mental health and cognitive processes in the development and maintenance of addictive behaviors. By addressing the emotional and cognitive factors underlying addiction, treatment approaches informed by this model can support individuals in developing healthier coping strategies and more adaptive beliefs, ultimately promoting lasting recovery. However, it is important to consider the Psychological Model in conjunction with other models of addiction, as a comprehensive understanding of addiction requires the integration of biological, psychological, and social factors. Large discrepancies between drug addicts’ self-appraisal and self-acceptance can lead to subthreshold depression. Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory states that individuals strive for inner balance and will feel stressed when it’s disrupted 82.‘Self-serving bias’ refers to the tendency to accept credit for success and deny responsibility for failure 83.

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