The Office of the Surgeon General recently produced its first Report on the consequences of alcohol and drug abuse on health, making several very laudable policy recommendations, including characterizing addiction as a Brain Disease Model of Addiction (BDMA). However, the Report is marred by a biased viewpoint on the psychology and neurobiology of drug addiction. We highlight here four controversial issues that were depicted as facts in the Report, thereby potentially misleading non‐expert readers about the current state-of-the-art understanding of the psychology and neurobiology of drug addiction. It will be important to recognize a fuller range of scientific viewpoints in addiction neuroscience to avoid amplifying this bias in the coming years. The current dominant perspective on addiction as a brain disease has been challenged recently by Marc Lewis, who argued that the brain-changes related to addiction are similar to everyday changes of the brain. From this alternative perspective, addictions are bad habits that can be broken, provided that people are motivated to change. In that case, autonomous choice or free will can overcome bad influences from genes and or environments and brain-changes related to addiction. The brain changes occurring with addiction are related to choice behavior (and the related notions of willed action), habit formation and insight, hence essential mental abilities to break the addiction..
This course is based on the articles, Addiction research and theory: a commentary on the Surgeon General’s Report on alcohol, drugs, and health created by Aldo Badiani et al. in 2017, Free Will, Black Swans and Addiction created by Reinout W Wiers, PhD et al. in 2017 and Introduction: Testing and Refining Marc Lewis’s Critique of the Brain Disease Model of Addiction created by Stephen Mattews et al. in 2017.
Publication Date:
2016-2017
Course Material Authors
Course Material Authors authored the material only, and were not involved in creating this CE course. They are identified here for your own evaluation of the relevancy of the material this course is based on.
Aldo Badiani
Aldo Badiani is a professor of Pharmacology at Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy. Much of his research has been in the addiction field and he has presented multiple lectures, written book chapters and published more than 75 articles in peer reviewed journals.
Reinout W Wiers, PhD
Reinout W Wiers is professor of developmental psychopathology at the Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam. Reinout does research in Abnormal Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Developmental Psychopathology. He is head of the Addiction Development and Psychopathology (ADAPT) lab.
Stephen Matthews
Dr Stephen Matthews is Senior Research Fellow at the Plunkett Centre for Ethics (a joint centre of St Vincent’s and Mater Health, and ACU), and in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy. His published works relate to the metaphysics of personal identity over time, moral psychology, the philosophy of psychiatry, and applied ethics. Recently he has been focusing on questions of autonomy, agency, and narrative identity where those concepts may test, and be tested by, empirical findings related to those struggling with addictions, mental illness, or dementia.
L.A. Rankin is a social worker with experience in many different settings with a variety of clients. She has worked with dementia and Alzheimers patients, dual diagnosis MH/MR, in a battered women’s shelter, and a rape crisis center. She also has 11 years of experience as a child protective social worker, where she earned certificates in domestic abuse/family violence and substance abuse.
Recommended For:
Clinicians, physicians, administrators, researchers. This course is appropriate for intermediate levels of participants’ knowledge.
Course Objectives:
After taking this course, you should be able to:
Acknowledge there is an opposing view to the biological disease model in the Surgeon General’s report and more current scientific data available.
Identify Marc Lewis and his research as the leading authority on the opposing view and the research that his book has spun off.
Extrapolate the two opposing models, and a third biological disorder model and apply those theories to treatment of clients/patients.
Disclosures
Disclosure of Relevant Financial Relationships
Disclosure of Relevant Financial Relationships
CE Learning Systems, LLC is an independent provider of continuing medical education. CE Learning Systems, LLC has no proprietary or financial interest in medical or healthcare products over which the FDA (USA) or EMA (EU) has regulatory authority.
In accordance with our disclosure policies, CE Learning Systems, LLC is committed to ensuring balance, independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor for all accredited continuing education. These policies include assigning relevance to, and mitigating, all perceived or real conflicts of interest between any individual with control over the content and any ineligible company (commercial interest).
Any individual with control over accredited content, including planner, faculty, and reviewer, is required to globally disclose:
Individual relationship(s) or lack thereof, and its nature, with any/all ineligible company, and
any investigational, off-label, or non-FDA approved content or discussion
CE Learning Systems, LLC has reviewed these disclosures, assigned relevance based on the relationship and scope of content, and identified those with the potential to compromise the goals and educational integrity of the education. Relevant relationships, or lack thereof, are shared with the learner.
Education has been independently peer-reviewed to validate content, mitigate identified conflicts of interest, and ensure:
All recommendations involving clinical medicine is based on evidence that is accepted within the medical profession as adequate justification for their indications and contraindications in the care of patients.
All scientific research referred to, reported, or used in accredited continuing education in support or justification of a patient care recommendation conforms to the generally accepted standards of experimental design, data collection, and analysis.
Content is appropriate, fair and balanced, unbiased, referenced, and non-promotional.
Planners
The planners have reported the following: There are no relevant disclosures.
Course Material Authors
The authors have disclosed any disclosures within the material.
Course Creator: L.A. Rankin
There are no relevant disclosures.
Commercial support
There is no commercial support for this distance-learning course.
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