HRT in Addiction and Mental Health Treatment Therapy
Habit reversal training has been used as a part of mental health treatment since the early 1970s. It has mainly been used to help in the treatment of disorders such as Tourette’s syndrome, trichotillomania (hair-pulling), nail-biting, skin picking, and stuttering.
Recently, the argument has been made for the use of this behavioral therapy for addiction, specifically alcohol use disorder (AUD). This reasoning behind this idea is the finding that AUD patients show an automatic approach bias to alcohol cues. It is also based on the finding that repeated self-administration of alcohol gradually shifts the mechanisms driving behavior to stimulus-response associations. In other words, cravings and consumption are eventually triggered by alcohol-associated stimuli and cues.
Does Habit Reversal Training Work
Habit reversal training works by shifting habits through mindfulness and motivation. It also involved practicing changes in behavior through alternative and competing responses. Further, it uses operant conditioning techniques, which psychologists and neuroscientists have been using for years to understand behavior.
Trichotillomania habit reversal training has been shown to be particularly effective. Habit reversal training and skin picking research has also been promising. Although more research is needed, HRT may also prove to be useful for the treatment of AUD and other substance abuse problems.
Contact The Recovery Village Palm Beach at Baptist Health to speak with a representative about how professional addiction treatment can address a substance use disorder and any co-occurring mental health disorders. You deserve a healthier future, call today.
- Sources
Miltenberger, Raymond; et al. “Applying behavior analysis to clinical problems: Review and analysis of habit reversal.” Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1998. Accessed September 22, 2019.
Stock, Ann-Kathrin. “Barking up the wrong tree: why and how we may need to revise alcohol addiction therapy.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2017. Accessed September 22, 2019.
Gladwin, Thomas E. “Attentional bias variability and cued attentional bias for alcohol stimuli.” Addiction Research & Theory, 2017. Accessed September 22, 2019.
de Wit, Sanne, and Anthony Dickinson. “Associative theories of goal-directed behavior: a case for animal-human translational models.” Psychological Research, 2009. Accessed September 22, 2019.
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