Mindfulness could boost opioid use disorder treatment

Admin on 16 / 10 / 2019 under News

Thousands of people experience negative health outcomes from the overuse or misuse of opioids, a drug class that includes both illegal substances, such as heroin, and prescription medicines for pain relief. Can mindfulness boost the effects of traditional treatments that relieve opioid cravings?

The National Institute on Drug Abuse report that around 21–29% of people, whose doctors prescribe them opioids for the management of chronic pain, end up misusing these drugs. Furthermore, some 8–12% of people who take prescription opioids develop opioid use disorder.

Some of the criteria that specialists use to diagnose opioid use disorder — according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — include:

·       taking opioids for longer or in larger quantities than the doctor advised

·       experiencing intense and hard to control cravings for opioids

·       opioid use negatively affecting performance at work or school

Usually, when a person receives a diagnosis of an opioid use disorder, doctors prescribe methadone maintenance therapy.

In this form of therapy, doctors offer people controlled doses of methadone — also an opioid — to help reduce withdrawal symptoms and reduce cravings for opioid drugs.

"Methadone maintenance therapy has been an effective form of medication treatment for opioid use disorder," notes Nina Cooperman, an associate professor and clinical psychologist in the Division of Addiction Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, NJ.

"However, nearly half of individuals on [methadone maintenance therapy] continue to use opioids during treatment or relapse [within] 6 months," she adds.

For this reason, Cooperman and colleagues were interested in finding out whether some alternative practices, specifically, mindfulness, could help boost the effectiveness of methadone maintenance therapy for people with opioid use disorder.

From source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326699.php