Category: Addictive Behaviors
Caroline Scherzer, B.S. (she/her/hers)
Graduate Student
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Julia Buckner, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Professor
Louisiana State University
Baton Rogue, Louisiana
Amanda Raines, Ph.D.
Clinical Investigator
Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System
New Orleans, Louisiana
Andrew Rogers, M.A. (he/him/his)
University of Washington Medical Center
Seattle, Washington
Tanya Smit, M.A. (she/her/hers)
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Houston
Houston, Texas
Kirsten Langdon, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Warren Alpert medical School of Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
Caroline Scherzer, B.S. (she/her/hers)
Graduate Student
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
The opioid epidemic is a significant public health problem that has been linked to increased rates of morbidity and mortality (Jalal et al., 2018; Scholl et al., 2019). Further, opioid misuse and related deaths continue to rise (Ahmad et al., 2021; Mattson et al., 2021; Wilson, 2020). Thus, understanding and targeting underlying mediating and moderating transdiagnostic vulnerability factors for the development and maintenance of opioid use-related problems is critical. This symposia reviews the application of clinical science principles to understanding opioid use and misuse and its translation to interventions that are both efficacious and cost-effective.
The first talk will lay the groundwork for the important role of anxiety and other types of negative affect on the maintenance of opioid misuse by presenting results from a review of the empirical literature that indicates a strong relation of anxiety with opioid misuse and use-related problems. The second talk will discuss findings from a study aimed at identifying mechanisms underlying negative affect’s strong relation with opioid misuse and related problems – the role of specific types of anxiety sensitivity (i.e., fear of physical, cognitive, or social symptoms of anxiety). Results highlight the importance of specific types of anxiety (in this case, physical and cognitive anxiety-related concerns) in opioid misuse. The third talk will present pilot data from a novel cognitive-behavioral approach to working with patients with opioid use disorder. The fourth talk discusses the utility of motivation enhancement therapy combined with cognitive behavioral therapy for opioid use disorder during inpatient psychiatry hospitalization. Our discussant, Dr. Raines, is a clinical investigator with both research and clinical experience working with patients with opioid use disorder; she will discuss the empirical and clinical implications of this body of work.