Conducting in-depth interviews about sensitive subjects requires great awareness and respect for the ‘informants’ emotions and boundaries [12]. The informants were encouraged to contact their therapist, family, or friends if they needed anyone to talk to about stressful thoughts and emotions following the interviews. The following quotations were translated by the authors and anonymised, but retain the content and meaning of the original narratives.
Substance use disorders / Addictions as a Biopsychosocial Plus phenomenon
From a neuroscience perspective, it is difficult to see such actions as completely free, particularly when explanations of natural phenomena are understood as causally ordered. The notion of free choice becomes particularly troublesome due to the conscious experience of acting freely. As Searle (2004) argues, “there is a striking difference between the passive character of perceptual consciousness and the active character of what we might call ‘volitional consciousness’“ (41). There are several processes that actively contribute to substance use with inputs and outputs on biological and psycho-social levels.
What Do We Know About Informal Caregiving in the Field of Addiction?: A Scoping Review
- The clearest expression of dualist assumptions in psychology was in behaviorism, which explicitly excluded mental processes from explanations of behavior – a position much like Engel attributed to the BMM.
- Bandura’s theory was novel in arguing that (1) behavior, (2) the environment, and (3) personal factors internal to the individual (including biological characteristics and abilities), have reciprocal influences on one another – events that impact one of these components will also impact the others.
- Physicians do not regard every distinctive manifestation of, say, tuberculosis or COVID 19 as a separate disease that gets its own label.
- For Plato, true knowledge came from introspection and by intentionally shutting out what our senses may fool us to believe.
Placing addiction at the center of this model reveals how addiction is greater than the sum of its parts. The factors that have causal influences on addictive behavior do not operate independently but are part of a complex network that both directly and indirectly influence addictive behavior ad infinitum. Once these factors begin to set the occasion for addictive behavior, a series of interdependent events begin to unfold, with each event further increasing drug intake, and making the other events all the more effective Sober House at increasing drug use further. A new individual is created with each additional drug experience – an individual that is progressively more likely to make pathological choices for drugs over other reinforcers, even at great personal and social costs. The number of mechanisms by which the social environment can influence behavior is remarkable. In addition to observing and imitating the behavior of others, other people can directly reinforce an individual’s behavior, either through social praise, contact, or inclusion.
- Every learned action, whether pro-social or anti-social, may be prompted by social conditions such as a lack of resources, conflict, social norms, peer pressure, an underlying drive (e.g., hunger, sex, craving), or a combination of these factors (Bunge 1997).
- As Gillett (2009) remarks, “a decision is not a circumscribed event in neuro-time that could be thought of as an output, and an intention is not a causal event preceding that output, but both are much more holistically interwoven with the lived and experienced fabric of one’s life” (p. 333).
- Second, and connected, regulatory mechanisms can break down, allowing foundational distinctions between life and death, health and disease, that are unavailable in physics and chemistry.
- The biopsychosocial model provides a means of considering the myriad of factors that can contribute to the risk of addiction.
How Healthcare Professionals Use the Biopsychosocial Model
In wayward BPSM discourse, however, people’s beliefs, etc., are treated as disease “risk factors” to be altered by medical and public health actors (Barron et al. 2021; Hargarten et al. 2018). Along with “national security,” “public health” is one of the few imperatives that readily justifies state abrogation of individual rights. Thus, the production of a new and https://thetennesseedigest.com/top-5-advantages-of-staying-in-a-sober-living-house/ expansive public health problem in the “gun violence disease” discourse has the potential to significantly increase the power of the state, and not just that of the medical field per se. The word addiction has its etymological roots in Latin and suggests a slave-like devotion to something or someone, but its application to drugs is a much more recent development.
Using substances to cope, feel better, and belong may reduce anxiety, restlessness, disturbing emotions, and feelings of hopelessness and loneliness [14, 19]. The substances affect the brain’s central functions, including dopamine production and executive functions, with a consequent craving for substances and impaired impulse control [47, 49]. This may involve reckless behaviour that is often incomprehensible to other people and may lead to stigma and shame [16, 18, 48]. Mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, may increase [29], and it may be difficult to maintain social relationships, everyday parenting responsibilities and work routines [18, 34]. The hard work of obtaining, paying for, and using substances becomes all-consuming [37, 47]. Most people who develop SUD either manage their substance-induced life problems adequately or are able to quit on their own or with help from family and friends [42].
Addiction can also send your emotional danger-sensing circuits into overdrive, making you feel anxious and stressed when you’re not using drugs or alcohol. At this stage, people often use drugs or alcohol to keep from feeling bad rather than for their pleasurable effects. They’ve shown that addiction is a long-lasting and complex brain disease, and that current treatments can help people control their addictions. But even for those who’ve successfully quit, there’s always a risk of the addiction returning, which is called relapse.