Effectiveness of Mindfulness Based Interventions for Substance Use Disorders

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW
LITERATURE REVIEW
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
Prolonged use of drugs and alcohol increases the overall risk of both mental and physical
health conditions deteriorating the quality of life and severe disorders eventually leading to
mortality. Despite of the treatment approaches or options available in this area, very few have
found to be effective in terms of achieving an improved clinical outcome. Studies have found
cognitive behavioral therapy to be effective in this area, however, the therapy is linked with a
short term success where relapse has become a significant issue for about 50-70% of the patients
who have been subjected to this therapy (McHugh, Hearon & Otto, 2010). Therefore, the authors
have acknowledged the urgency to search for an effective intervention that can reduce the rate of
substance abuse like alcohol and other drugs and also reduce the relapse rate which has
significantly increases in the past years affecting a huge number of people. Mindfulness have
been found to be an effective therapy for the treatment of an array of such additive behaviors and
substance abuse including alcohol and other drugs affecting both physical and mental health of
an individual (Garland & Howard, 2018). As a result, the authors, Chiesa and Serretti (2014),
have taken into consideration the interest and effectiveness of mindfulness based intervention as
a therapeutic tool for substance abuse, and aimed at conducting a systematic review on the
scientific evidences for usefulness and effectiveness of mindfulness based intervention for
substance abuse like alcohol and other drugs which are potentially detrimental to both physical
as well as mental health of the consumer (Chiesa & Serretti, 2014).

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LITERATURE REVIEW
Discussion:
The paper by Chiesa and Serretti (2014), aims to determine the effectiveness of
Mindfulness Based Interventions to treat the disorders caused due to substance abuse. The survey
was conducted by using electronic databases which included articles published till December
2011. Upon accessing the quality of the included trials, a total 24 studies were found to be
matching with the inclusion criteria and 3 of them were built on secondary analyses of samples
that were inspected previously. Current evidence have shown the therapeutic efficiency of
Mindfulness based Interventions to decrease the consumption of alcohol and other substances
including cigarettes, cocaine, marijuana, opiates and other substances to a greater extent. Some
primary studies have also suggested that Mindfulness based interventions have found to decrease
the cravings and increase mindfulness to eradicate the harmful effects of substance abuse on both
physical as well as mental health (Priddy et al., 2018). The study by Schulte and Hser (2013),
shows that substance abuse not only increases the overall risk of accidental injury, overdose and
attempted suicide, but also, increases the risk of developing associated physical health conditions
like kidney diseases, cardiac diseases, cancer, sexually transmitted disease and other mental
commodities like anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, depression and other related conditions
(Schulte & Hser, 2013). The literature search for the study conducted by Chiesa and Serretti
(2014), was undertaken by reviews with the help of MEDLINE, EMBASE, ISI web of science
and PsychINFO and the references were used from the retrieved article that were indexed in the
electronic databases and were published till December 2011. The search strategy that was
followed had various inclusion criteria and one of them was the language bar. Articles were
selected which were published in English and contained certain keywords or searching terms like
“mindfulness based interventions”, “mindfulness meditation”, “mindfulness training” and also