Psychological Models of Addiction Flashcards
What categories can the costs of addiction fall under?
Health, social, economic and criminal
What are the key policies around addiction?
Road to recovery = new approach to tackling Scotland’s drug problem
Hidden harm = Scottish Executive response to the report on the misuse of alcohol
Changing Scotland’s relationship with alcohol = framework for change
What are the core features of addictive behaviour?
Salience = importance, dominance
Mood modification = rush and escape
Tolerance = escalation for effect, increasing intensity
Withdrawl = unpleasant effect when use prevented
Conflict = interpersonal, intrapsychic, loss of control
Relapse
What is the moral model of addiction?
Addictions seen as wilful violations of societal rules as a result of human weakness
Individual is primary causal factor = something is morally wrong with them
What is the focus of the moral model of addiction?
Moral persuasion, imprisonment or spiritual guidance
What is the dispositional disease model of addiction?
Primary causal factor is individual = loss of control and restraint is central premise
Addiction is irreversible but can be stopped by total abstinence
What is the personality model of addiction?
Primary causal factor is individual = roots of addiction lie in abnormal personality
Resolution requires the restructuring of personality
What are the causal traits of addiction under the personality model?
Poor impulse control, low self esteem, inability to cope with stress, egocentricity, manipulative traits, need for control, feeling powerless
What is the premise of Bion?
Psychic states and feelings have to be contained to be manageable
What are some features of Bion?
Primary motivation = desperate search for container
Drug of choice represents childhood mother = becomes central object of need and supplants other relationships
What is the medical model of addiction?
Emphasis on genetic and physiological processes determining addiction
Tries to identify unique biological conditions which contribute to addiction
What is the evidence in support of the medical model of addiction?
Addiction is about 50% heritable
Physiological processes influence vulnerability and behaviour
What are the discrete neural circuits involved in different stages of addiction?
Binge-intoxication = VTA, ventral striatum Withdrawl = amygdala Preoccupation = cortex, hippocampus, insula, cingulate gyrus
What are the limitations of the medical model of addiction?
Medical treatments are less effective in promoting abstinence and don’t exist for many addictive behaviours
Addiction is primarily disorder of behaviour
How do people learn behaviours?
Through interactions with our internal/external worlds = actions are influenced by associations made between behaviour and environment
What is engaging in behaviours underpinned by?
Principles of reinforcement
What does addiction result from under the behavioural model?
Well-rehearsed, over-learned repertoires of behaviour
What is conditioning?
Process of learned behaviour modification whereby an individual comes to associate a desired behaviour with previous unrelated stimuli
What does treatment of substance misuse require?
Must involve relearning new behaviours since substance misuse is a learned behaviour
What is classical conditioning?
Associative learning = through repeated pairings with the cue a previous neutral stimuli will come to elicit the same response
What is operant conditioning?
Instrumental learning = learning by connecting the consequences of an action with the preceding behaviour
What is a habit?
Acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it becomes almost involuntary = due to associative and instrumental learning
What is the cognitive theory of addiction?
Addiction recruits and influences cognitive processes = attention and memory biases
Selectively recall particular addiction related info
Implicit bias toward detection of addiction related cues
Leads to involuntary responses and lack of cognitive control
What are the features of controlled cognitive processing?
Slow, deliberate, effortful, conscious, sequential
What are the features of automatic cognitive processing?
Fast, unintentional, no effort required, usually out of awareness, in parallel
What does learning a new behaviour require?
Controlled processing
What do practice and learning cause?
Make controlled processing obsolete = processes become automatic due to overlearning
What happens to the sequence of a behaviour once it has been learned?
Stored in memory and is activated by cues = conscious deliberate thought is no longer required
What is the function of addictive behaviour?
Feel good factor = substance provides more of something, common in social/celebratory situations
Escape = thoughts/feelings seen as overwhelming, substances help to block out and provide escape
What is the central premise of the cognitive behavioural model of addiction?
Perception and thought, in addition to unconscious processes, influence emotion and behaviour
What are the features of the cognitive behavioural model?
Addictive thinking maintains drug or alcohol use
Changes in addictive behaviour occur due to changes in motivation, cognition and appraisal
What is the biopsychosocial model of addiction?
Concerned with interactions between biological, psychological and social factors
Holistic approach = no factors are dominant
What are the biological factors in addiction?
Current non-prescribed or prescribed drug use
Physical dependency and injecting behaviours
Drug use and treatment history
High risk sexual behaviour
General physical health and physical treatment goals
What are the psychological factors in addiction?
Full personal/developmental history
Functional analysis of current drug use
Beliefs about drug use and coping skills/styles
Cognitive functioning
Current or past psychological/psychiatric problems
Psychological treatment goals
What are the social factors in addiction?
Exploring significant relationships
Housing and employment
Financial difficulties and contact with law enforcement
Social treatment goals
