- Email: [email protected]
Emotion regulation and drug abuse: Implications for prevention and treatment
Drug and Alcohol Dependence 163 (2016) S1–S2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Drug and Alcohol Dependence journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/drugalcdep
Editorial
Emotion regulation and drug abuse: Implications for prevention and treatment
In May, 2014, a symposium entitled “Emotion Self-Regulation and Drug Abuse Vulnerability: Connecting Biology and Prevention Science” was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Prevention Research in Washington, D.C. The symposium was coorganized by Dr. Jacqueline Lloyd at NIDA and Dr. Michael Bardo at the University of Kentucky; Dr. Anthony Biglan at the Oregon Research Institute served as discussant. The lively discussion and questions generated at this symposium made it clear that, while emotion regulation is widely studied, application of this biologically-based construct in the design and implementation of prevention and treatment strategies has been lacking. This gap motivated the development of this supplemental issue to support a wider dissemination of these important topics for basic researchers and applied interventionists. Each of the main contributors at the SPR symposium (Derefinko, Tang and Wills) have contributed to this supplemental issue, along with other prevention- and treatment-oriented investigators with research programs informing the concepts of emotional regulation and impulsivity across various domains within the field of drug abuse. Impulsivity is widely recognized as a risk factor for many negative health-related outcomes, including the initiation of drug use and drug abuse vulnerability (Brady et al., 1998; de Wit, 2009). Similarly, emotion dysregulation or negative affect is also a core feature of addiction (Tang et al., 2015). Emerging evidence indicates that emotion dysregulation and impulsivity can interact in important ways that predict drug use vulnerability. However, impulsivity is not a unitary concept, but instead involves multiple facets (Jentsch et al., 2014). Using the UPPS personality inventory (Whiteside and Lynam, 2001), one important facet of impulsivity is known as “negative urgency”, which is the tendency to act rashly when in a negative mood state. Importantly, among the various facets of impulsivity, evidence suggests that negative urgency is most closely linked to problematic drug use during adolescence and young adulthood (Lynam, 2011; Verdejo-Garcia et al., 2007). Thus, the combined influences of emotion regulation and impulsivity are critically important, albeit understudied, targeting variables for informing strategies to prevent and treat drug abuse. The contributors to this supplemental issue represent a group of national experts that use various analytic approaches centered around the themes of impulsivity, emotion regulation and drug abuse. The overall goal of this supplement is to provide the type of multi-disciplinary translational input that will be useful for informing prevention and treatment interventionists. Setting the stage,
Smith and Cyders provide an overview of mood-based impulsivity as it relates to problematic drug use in adolescents and adults. While emotion regulation cannot be assessed directly in preclinical models, Barker and Rebec provide evidence that a reward omission task may be useful for characterizing individual differences in response to frustrative non-reward in rats exposed to cocaine. It may be possible to translate preclinical results to humans using brain imaging technologies, as described by the articles lead by Tang and Chester. Derefinko and colleagues extend this work by examining how physiological reactivity measures linked to inhibition and emotion regulation predict drug use in college students. In addition to the potential neural substrates, studying emotion regulation and drug abuse across psychosocial risk variables is yielding important evidence that mood states can drive alcohol and drug taking; Dvorak and colleagues show a relation between mood instability and alcohol use among college students, while Wills and colleagues use structural equation modeling to demonstrate a path from emotion dysregulation to problem use among adolescents. Given this growing evidence for emotion dysregulation as a risk factor, it becomes imperative to ask: can we use emotion dysregulation as a target for prevention or treatment interventions? In response to this question, Clark et al., show that autonomic arousal markers for emotion regulation are apparent even in preschoolers, suggesting a window for early preventive strategies. Pentz and colleagues found an association between executive functioning (e.g., emotion regulation, planning and decision making, and impulse control) and substance use experimentation among early adolescents, and they call for executive skills integrated with mindfulness training to be incorporated into future prevention interventions. This compendium of studies examined the separate and combined influences of impulsivity and emotion regulation, demonstrating both the independent and interactive influences of these constructs on the initiation and escalation of drug use and engagement in other risky behaviors. Furthermore, these studies shed light on new pathways and strategies for managing risky behavior, and in doing so, open new opportunities for drug abuse prevention and treatment interventions. Contributors Thomas H. Kelly and Michael T. Bardo contributed equally to the writing of the introduction and to the planning and editing of the issue.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2016.02.038 0376-8716/© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/).
S2
Editorial / Drug and Alcohol Dependence 163 (2016) S1–S2
Conflict of interest No conflicts declared.
de Wit, H., 2009. Impulsivity as a determinant and consequence of drug use: a review of underlying processes. Addict. Biol. 14, 22–31, http://dx.doi.org/10. 1111/j.1369-1600.2008.00129.x.
Acknowledgement
a
We acknowledge the support of NIDA (P50 DA05312) in preparing this special issue. References Brady, K.T., Myrick, H., McElroy, S., 1998. The relationship between substance use disorders impulse control disorders, and pathological aggression. Am. J. Addict. 7, 221–230. Jentsch, J.D., Ashenhurst, J.R., Cervantes, M.C., Groman, S.M., James, A.S., Pennington, Z.T., 2014. Dissecting impulsivity and its relationships to drug addictions. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1327, 1–26. Lynam, D.R., 2011. Inhibitory control as a predictor for conduct disorders. In: Bardo, M.T., Fishbein, D., Milich, R. (Eds.), Inhibitory Control and Drug Abuse Prevention: From Research to Translation. Springer, New York. Tang, Y.Y., Posner, M.I., Rothbart, M.K., Volkow, N.D., 2015. Circuitry of self-control and its role in reducing addiction. Trends Cogn. Sci. 19, 439–444. Tang, Y.Y., Posner, M.I., Rothbart, M.K., Volkow, N.D., 2015. Circuitry of self-control and its role in reducing addiction. Trends Cogn. Sci. 19, 439–444. Verdejo-Garcia, A., Bechara, A., Recknor, E.C., Perez-Garcia, M., 2007. Negative emotion-driven impulsivity predicts substance dependence problems. Drug Alcohol Depend. 91, 213–219. Whiteside, S.P., Lynam, D.R., 2001. The five factor model and impulsivity: using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity. Pers. Individ. Differ. 30, 669–689.
a
Thomas H. Kelly a,b,∗ Department of Behavioral Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536, United States b Center on Drug Abuse Research Translation (CDART), University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, United States
Michael T. Bardo a,b Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, United States b Center on Drug Abuse Research Translation (CDART), University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, United States ∗ Corresponding
author. Fax: +1 859 323 5350. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.H. Kelly) 15 February 2016 16 February 2016
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Drug and Alcohol Dependence journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/drugalcdep
Editorial
Emotion regulation and drug abuse: Implications for prevention and treatment
In May, 2014, a symposium entitled “Emotion Self-Regulation and Drug Abuse Vulnerability: Connecting Biology and Prevention Science” was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Prevention Research in Washington, D.C. The symposium was coorganized by Dr. Jacqueline Lloyd at NIDA and Dr. Michael Bardo at the University of Kentucky; Dr. Anthony Biglan at the Oregon Research Institute served as discussant. The lively discussion and questions generated at this symposium made it clear that, while emotion regulation is widely studied, application of this biologically-based construct in the design and implementation of prevention and treatment strategies has been lacking. This gap motivated the development of this supplemental issue to support a wider dissemination of these important topics for basic researchers and applied interventionists. Each of the main contributors at the SPR symposium (Derefinko, Tang and Wills) have contributed to this supplemental issue, along with other prevention- and treatment-oriented investigators with research programs informing the concepts of emotional regulation and impulsivity across various domains within the field of drug abuse. Impulsivity is widely recognized as a risk factor for many negative health-related outcomes, including the initiation of drug use and drug abuse vulnerability (Brady et al., 1998; de Wit, 2009). Similarly, emotion dysregulation or negative affect is also a core feature of addiction (Tang et al., 2015). Emerging evidence indicates that emotion dysregulation and impulsivity can interact in important ways that predict drug use vulnerability. However, impulsivity is not a unitary concept, but instead involves multiple facets (Jentsch et al., 2014). Using the UPPS personality inventory (Whiteside and Lynam, 2001), one important facet of impulsivity is known as “negative urgency”, which is the tendency to act rashly when in a negative mood state. Importantly, among the various facets of impulsivity, evidence suggests that negative urgency is most closely linked to problematic drug use during adolescence and young adulthood (Lynam, 2011; Verdejo-Garcia et al., 2007). Thus, the combined influences of emotion regulation and impulsivity are critically important, albeit understudied, targeting variables for informing strategies to prevent and treat drug abuse. The contributors to this supplemental issue represent a group of national experts that use various analytic approaches centered around the themes of impulsivity, emotion regulation and drug abuse. The overall goal of this supplement is to provide the type of multi-disciplinary translational input that will be useful for informing prevention and treatment interventionists. Setting the stage,
Smith and Cyders provide an overview of mood-based impulsivity as it relates to problematic drug use in adolescents and adults. While emotion regulation cannot be assessed directly in preclinical models, Barker and Rebec provide evidence that a reward omission task may be useful for characterizing individual differences in response to frustrative non-reward in rats exposed to cocaine. It may be possible to translate preclinical results to humans using brain imaging technologies, as described by the articles lead by Tang and Chester. Derefinko and colleagues extend this work by examining how physiological reactivity measures linked to inhibition and emotion regulation predict drug use in college students. In addition to the potential neural substrates, studying emotion regulation and drug abuse across psychosocial risk variables is yielding important evidence that mood states can drive alcohol and drug taking; Dvorak and colleagues show a relation between mood instability and alcohol use among college students, while Wills and colleagues use structural equation modeling to demonstrate a path from emotion dysregulation to problem use among adolescents. Given this growing evidence for emotion dysregulation as a risk factor, it becomes imperative to ask: can we use emotion dysregulation as a target for prevention or treatment interventions? In response to this question, Clark et al., show that autonomic arousal markers for emotion regulation are apparent even in preschoolers, suggesting a window for early preventive strategies. Pentz and colleagues found an association between executive functioning (e.g., emotion regulation, planning and decision making, and impulse control) and substance use experimentation among early adolescents, and they call for executive skills integrated with mindfulness training to be incorporated into future prevention interventions. This compendium of studies examined the separate and combined influences of impulsivity and emotion regulation, demonstrating both the independent and interactive influences of these constructs on the initiation and escalation of drug use and engagement in other risky behaviors. Furthermore, these studies shed light on new pathways and strategies for managing risky behavior, and in doing so, open new opportunities for drug abuse prevention and treatment interventions. Contributors Thomas H. Kelly and Michael T. Bardo contributed equally to the writing of the introduction and to the planning and editing of the issue.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2016.02.038 0376-8716/© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/).
S2
Editorial / Drug and Alcohol Dependence 163 (2016) S1–S2
Conflict of interest No conflicts declared.
de Wit, H., 2009. Impulsivity as a determinant and consequence of drug use: a review of underlying processes. Addict. Biol. 14, 22–31, http://dx.doi.org/10. 1111/j.1369-1600.2008.00129.x.
Acknowledgement
a
We acknowledge the support of NIDA (P50 DA05312) in preparing this special issue. References Brady, K.T., Myrick, H., McElroy, S., 1998. The relationship between substance use disorders impulse control disorders, and pathological aggression. Am. J. Addict. 7, 221–230. Jentsch, J.D., Ashenhurst, J.R., Cervantes, M.C., Groman, S.M., James, A.S., Pennington, Z.T., 2014. Dissecting impulsivity and its relationships to drug addictions. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 1327, 1–26. Lynam, D.R., 2011. Inhibitory control as a predictor for conduct disorders. In: Bardo, M.T., Fishbein, D., Milich, R. (Eds.), Inhibitory Control and Drug Abuse Prevention: From Research to Translation. Springer, New York. Tang, Y.Y., Posner, M.I., Rothbart, M.K., Volkow, N.D., 2015. Circuitry of self-control and its role in reducing addiction. Trends Cogn. Sci. 19, 439–444. Tang, Y.Y., Posner, M.I., Rothbart, M.K., Volkow, N.D., 2015. Circuitry of self-control and its role in reducing addiction. Trends Cogn. Sci. 19, 439–444. Verdejo-Garcia, A., Bechara, A., Recknor, E.C., Perez-Garcia, M., 2007. Negative emotion-driven impulsivity predicts substance dependence problems. Drug Alcohol Depend. 91, 213–219. Whiteside, S.P., Lynam, D.R., 2001. The five factor model and impulsivity: using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity. Pers. Individ. Differ. 30, 669–689.
a
Thomas H. Kelly a,b,∗ Department of Behavioral Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536, United States b Center on Drug Abuse Research Translation (CDART), University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, United States
Michael T. Bardo a,b Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, United States b Center on Drug Abuse Research Translation (CDART), University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, United States ∗ Corresponding
author. Fax: +1 859 323 5350. E-mail address: [email protected] (T.H. Kelly) 15 February 2016 16 February 2016