JMIR Research ProtocolsMay 1, 2026Megan Kirouac, Daniel S Otero, David I K Moniz-Lewis et al.
Background: Globally, approximately 8.6% of people will meet criteria for alcohol use disorder (AUD) in their lifetimes, with 2.2% meeting criteria for AUD in the past 12 months. In the United States, AUD prevalence is even greater, with 13.9% meeting criteria in the past 12 months. Effective treatments for AUD exist, although most people receive help through mutual support groups (ie,...
Law enforcement officers (LEOs) are exposed to significant stressors that can impact their mental health, increasing risk of posttraumatic stress disorder, burnout, at-risk alcohol use, depression, and suicidality. Compromised LEO health can subsequently lead to aggression and excessive use of force. Mindfulness training is a promising approach for high-stress populations and has been shown to...
The combined use of cigarettes and alcohol is associated with an increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Yet, efficacious interventions that address both behaviors concurrently are lacking. Smoking cessation and alcohol modification not only garner health benefits, but there is also value in addressing alcohol use in the context of smoking cessation to reduce the risk for smoking relapse. In...
Low income and low educational attainment are among the strongest predictors of both smoking prevalence and lapse (i.e., return) to smoking after cessation attempts. Treatment refinement is limited by inadequate knowledge of the specific lapse- or relapse-relevant vulnerabilities characteristic of populations that should be the target of treatment. In the context of a randomized clinical trial...
BACKGROUND: Substance use disorders are prevalent and returning to substance use (i.e., relapse) following treatment is common, underscoring the need for effective treatments that will help individuals maintain long-term reductions in substance use. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been increasingly developed and evaluated for the treatment of substance use disorders. The aim of this...
Objectives: Elucidating the active ingredients of psychological treatments is an important step in the scientific validation of these interventions. Component studies are one way to test which aspects of psychological treatments impact outcomes, or in other words, are the active ingredients of treatment. As research and popular interest in mindfulness-based programs grows, it is important to...
MindfulnessApril 2019Yu-Yu Hsiao, Davood Tofighi, Eric S Kruger et al.
The development and evaluation of mindfulness-based interventions for a variety of psychological and medical disorders has grown exponentially over the past 20 years. Yet, calls for increasing the rigor of mindfulness research and recognition of the difficulties of conducting research on the topic of mindfulness have also increased. One of the major difficulties is the measurement of...
Social NeuroscienceFebruary 1, 2019Charles Robinson, Mika Armenta, Angela Combs et al.
Positive emotional perceptions and healthy emotional intelligence (EI) are important for social functioning. In this study, we investigated whether loving kindness meditation (LKM) combined with anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) would facilitate improvements in EI and changes in affective experience of visual stimuli. LKM has been shown to increase positive emotional...
Numerous studies have demonstrated that combat-exposed military veterans are at risk for numerous psychiatric disorders and rates of comorbid mental health and substance use disorders are high. Veterans wounded in combat are a particularly high-risk group of military veterans, however treatment services are often underutilized among this group and it is unclear whether an online treatment...
Previous research has found inconsistent relationships between trait mindfulness and state mindfulness. To extend previous research, we sought to examine the unique associations between self-report trait mindfulness and state mindfulness by levels of meditation experience (meditation-naïve vs. meditation-experienced) and by mindfulness induction (experimentally induced mindful state vs. control...
Objective: Few studies have evaluated moderators of mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP) for substance use disorders (SUDs). We tested whether baseline patterns of scores for SUD symptom severity and depression and anxiety symptoms moderated the efficacy of MBRP. Method: We used a latent class moderation approach with data from a randomized trial of MBRP compared to cognitive–behavioral...
Over the past 35 years, mindfulness meditation practices have increasingly been integrated into Western medical settings. Research into the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) continues to expand, such that there are currently more than a dozen different protocolled MBIs for patients suffering from a variety of physical and psychological disorders. In the last decade, a number of...
Mindfulness-based treatments are growing in popularity among addiction treatment providers, and several studies suggest the efficacy of incorporating mindfulness practices into the treatment of addiction, including the treatment of substance use disorders and behavioral addictions (i.e., gambling). The current paper provides a review of theoretical models of mindfulness in the treatment of...
Background: Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the US, while abstinence rates remain modest. Smoking has been shown to be perpetuated by operant conditioning, notably negative reinforcement (e.g., smoking to relieve negative affective states). Mindfulness training (MT) shows promise for smoking cessation, by potentially altering an individual's tendency to smoke in response to...
Addiction has generally been characterized as a chronic relapsing condition (Leshner, 1999). Several laboratory, preclinical, and clinical studies have provided evidence that craving and negative affect are strong predictors of the relapse process. These states, as well as the desire to avoid them, have been described as primary motives for substance use. A recently developed behavioral...
Previous studies have demonstrated that attempts to suppress thoughts about using substances may actually lead to increases in substance use. Vipassana, a mindfulness meditation practice, emphasizes acceptance, rather than suppression, of unwanted thoughts. A study by Bowen and colleagues examining the effects of a Vipassana course on substance use in an incarcerated population showed...
Despite the availability of various substance abuse treatments, alcohol and drug misuse and related negative consequences remain prevalent. Vipassana meditation (VM), a Buddhist mindfulness-based practice, provides an alternative for individuals who do not wish to attend or have not succeeded with traditional addiction treatments. In this study, the authors evaluated the effectiveness of a VM...