drericgarland Addiction, Chronic Pain, Mental Health, MORE, Neuroscience, Opioids, Research

New Research Funding: Targeting Chronic Pain among Veterans and Military Personnel with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement

 

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I was recently awarded $3.4 million in research funding from the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program for a five-year clinical trial award entitled “Targeting Chronic Pain and Co-Occurring Disorders in the Community with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement.” To help me to carry out this pragmatic, large-scale randomized controlled trial, I will be supported by an interdisciplinary team of expert co-investigators from the University of Utah, including Jon-Kar Zubieta, Craig Bryan, Yoshio Nakamura, Gary Donaldson, and Bill Marchand.

The co-occurrence of chronic pain, psychological distress, and misuse of prescription opioids undermines the mission of the U.S. Military and inflicts suffering upon Veterans and their families. Approximately one-half of service members have chronic pain following deployment, and nearly one-fifth engage in opioid misusing behaviors like unauthorized dose escalation and use of opioids to self-medicate stress and anxiety. The state of Utah (where the proposed study will be conducted) has one of the highest incidences of nonmedical use of opioids in the U.S. and a rapidly increasing rate of prescription opioid-related deaths. Indeed, an estimated 21% of Utah adults were prescribed opioids during the past year, of which approximately one-in-five report taking more than prescribed. Given that military personnel and Veterans have higher rates of pain-related conditions than the general population, their risk for opioid-related problems is significantly enhanced.

military

New scientific findings indicate that because stress worsens pain and increases habit responses in the brain, individuals who cope with stress and pain through opioids are likely to have the most serious and difficult-to-treat opioid-related problems. The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been marked by repeated deployments involving serious combat-related and occupational stress. Unfortunately, there are no evidence-based treatments that simultaneously address pain, opioid misuse, and psychological distress. To fill this gap, this research proposal aims to conduct a pragmatic trial of a novel integrative medicine approach combining Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) with conventional opioid pain management for service members and Veterans. MORE aims to strengthen self-control over habit behaviors, increase flexible thinking under conditions of stress, and promote the sense of reward and meaning in the face of adversity.

This research project will help active duty service members and Veterans with chronic pain and stress who are at-risk for opioid misuse, and will also inform the treatment of civilians with similar issues. Should MORE prove to be effective in a community-based context, it could be easily transported into military installations and Veterans Administration Medical Centers in the U.S. and around the world, as well as in communities where no major military medical center is present. In these settings, MORE could be offered as a form of standard integrative health care provided to service members and Veterans.

A secondary objective of the proposed project is to utilize lab-based assessments and mobile technology to understand how MORE works to create therapeutic change, and to predict whether and when service members and Veterans are at risk for relapsing back to opioid misuse. To accomplish this objective, lab-based assessments will evaluate physiological reactivity to cues associated with past episodes of pain and opioid use, and a smartphone-based assessment will be used to evaluate opioid craving, pain, and negative mood in “the real world.” Because changes in heart rate and other physiological factors may indicate the extent to which a person’s brain has been triggered by opioid craving, this application of mind-body assessments to predict opioid misuse risk and treatment outcomes could facilitate early risk detection.

The final objective of the project is to understand for whom MORE works best, to help ensure more efficient healthcare resource allocation to the service members and Veterans who need it most.  The proposed project will enable health care providers to more effectively deliver low-cost treatment to prevent progression toward opioid addiction, thereby averting costly inpatient stays, discharge from active duty military service, and social, legal, and occupational problems among Veterans. Ultimately, the proposed research could significantly enhance the psychological and physical health of military personnel and Veterans by addressing the need for new integrative medicine treatment options with findings from the leading edge of science.

drericgarland Addiction, Chronic Pain, Mental Health, MORE, Neuroscience, Opioids, Research

Research on MORE in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences – Targeting Hedonic Dysregulation with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement

mindfulness centered regulationIt is my pleasure to announce that the very first review paper summarizing the theoretical rationale and empirical evidence for Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) has been accepted for publication in the prestigious journal Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. In this paper, I review data from multiple clinical studies on the biobehavioral mechanisms of MORE, and articulate a hedonic regulatory model of the intervention – proposing that restructuring reward processing is the final common pathway through which MORE ameliorates addiction, stress, and pain. I map this novel theoretical model onto an earlier conceptual framework of the neural circuitry underlying mindfulness-centered regulation of addiction (Garland, Froeliger, & Howard, 2014) and then describe new neuroimaging and psychophysiological data in support of the model. The paper abstract is as follows:

“Though valuation processes are fundamental to survival of the human species, hedonic dysregulation is at the root of an array of clinical disorders including addiction, stress, and chronic pain, as evidenced by the allostatic shift in the relative salience of natural reward to drug reward observed among persons with severe substance use disorders. To address this crucial clinical issue, novel interventions are needed to restore hedonic regulatory processes gone awry in persons exhibiting addictive behaviors. This article describes theoretical rationale and empirical evidence for the effects of one such new intervention, Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), on top-down and bottom-up mechanisms implicated in cognitive control and hedonic regulation. MORE is innovative and distinct from extant mindfulness-based interventions in that in unites traditional mindfulness meditation with reappraisal and savoring strategies designed to reverse the downward shift in salience of natural reward relative to drug reward, representing a crucial tipping point to disrupt the progression of addiction – something that no other behavioral intervention has been designed to do. Though additional studies are needed, clinical and biobehavioral data from several completed and ongoing trials suggest that MORE may exert salutary effects on addictive behaviors and the neurobiological processes that underpin them.”

drericgarland Mental Health, MORE, Neuroscience, Research

The Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory: A New Process Model of Mindful Emotion Regulation

I am feeling particularly thankful today to my colleagues Norman Farb (University of Toronto), Philippe Goldin (University of California – Davis), and Barbara Fredrickson (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill), with whom I wrote and recently published the target article for the December issue of the esteemed, international journal Psychological Inquiry. Our target article, entitled “Mindfulness Broadens Awareness and Builds Eudaimonic Meaning: A Process Model of Mindful Positive Emotion Regulation,” articulates the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory, a new conceptual model of the cognitive, emotional, and neurobiological processes by which mindfulness might stimulate positive psychological states and lead to a sense of meaning in the face of adversity. In brief, the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory asserts that mindfulness allows one to decenter from stress appraisals into a metacognitive state of awareness that broadens attention to previously unnoticed pieces of information about one’s life, accommodating a reappraisal (i.e., a reframing) of adverse circumstances that reduces distress and promotes positive emotions. This reappraisal is then deepened and enriched when one savors what is pleasant, growth promoting, or meaningful in life, a process which motivates values-driven behavior and engenders a deeper sense of purpose and self-actualization.

The entire journal issue is devoted to the discussion of our new Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory. Our work was the subject of 10 erudite commentaries from leading scholars in the fields of contemplative science, addiction neuroscience, clinical psychology, affective science, psycho-oncology, social psychology, and consciousness studies, who extended, challenged, and pushed our theory into new and wider applications. We responded to the commentaries with our own article “The Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory: Extensions, Applications, and Challenges at the Attention–Appraisal–Emotion Interface,” which broadens the theory to address how mindfulness re-configures structures within working memory, describes mindfulness as a domain general resource for promoting emotion regulation flexibility, and suggests future directions to be pursued toward the establishment of a more comprehensive contemplative science.

The target article may be downloaded here and our response to the commentaries downloaded here.

May our work help advance the field to promote human flourishing!

drericgarland Mental Health, Neuroscience, Research

Mindfulness Training Promotes Upward Spirals of Positive Emotion and Cognition

MBCT_upward spiral figEarlier this year, along with colleagues Marieke Wichers, Nicole Geschwind, and Frenk Peeters (Maastrict University and University of Groningen), I published a paper on the effects of mindfulness training on the dynamic change trajectories of positive emotions and thoughts over time. This study analyzed data from a randomized controlled study of 110 individuals with histories of depression who were randomly assigned to receive an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy intervention or a control condition. Study participants rated their experiences of positive emotions and thoughts on a daily basis using a method called “experience sampling” (also known as ecological momentary assessment, or EMA), in which they were prompted at random times throughout the day to describe their mental state in the midst of everyday life activities. To analyze this data, we employed a sophisticated statistical technique called multivariate autoregressive latent trajectory modeling (see the Figure above). We found that mindfulness training significantly enhanced positive emotions and positive thoughts from moment-to-moment. Importantly, we also found evidence that mindfulness training may stimulate an upward spiral of positivity, such that increasing experiences of positive emotions on one day stimulated positive emotions and thoughts on the following day, and so forth. In other words, it appears as mindfulness training can enhance positive emotion-cognition interactions that may be important to psychological flourishing (and physical health). These data provideUpward Spiral - horizontal over time support for my new Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (see the Figure above), which will be featured on this website in a month or two when my paper about this theory will be published as the target article of the December issue of the esteemed international journal Psychological Inquiry and receive commentary by some of the leading contemplative scientists in the world. Stay tuned!

drericgarland Addiction, Media, MORE, Neuroscience, Opioids, Research

News: Dr. Garland’s Biobehavioral Research on MORE and Mindful Savoring Highlighted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse

MORE Reward ERPI recently learned that my research on Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) was highlighted on the National Institute on Drug Abuse website. The NIDA news story, entitled “Mindfulness training may reduce deficits in natural reward processing during chronic pain or drug addiction” details a study I conducted with my colleagues Brett Froeliger (Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina) and Matthew Howard (Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) that was published in April in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine. According to the excellent summary of this research on the NIDA website,

“Drug-dependent people show decreased behavioral and brain reactivity to natural rewards compared to non-drug users. As a result, drug-dependent users increasingly focus their attention on obtaining the drug instead of attending to natural rewards.  Recent research shows that a cognitive-based intervention may help restore natural reward processing in opioid-dependent participants.

In this study, chronic pain patients at risk for opioid misuse were randomized to either eight weeks of a Mindfulness-Oriented tetonsRecovery Enhancement (MORE) intervention or to an eight-week support group (control). Participants in the MORE intervention used mindfulness meditation to focus on all sensory features of a pleasant experience or object (for example, a beautiful nature scene like a sunset), while reflecting on any positive emotions arising in response to the pleasant event. The support group discussed topics and emotions related to chronic pain and opioid use/misuse. Following these interventions, all participants were shown images representing natural rewards (such as endearing animals, appealing foods, landscapes) or neutral images (furniture, neutral facial expressions, or household items). Researchers measured late positive potential (LPP) brain activity, which reflects attention to emotionally salient information, while participants viewed these images. In comparison to the control group, participants completing the MORE intervention showed greater LPP responses to natural reward images relative to neutral images and greater the LPP responses predicted reduced opioid cravings as reported by the participants.”

These results suggest that teaching people who misuse opioids to mindfully attend to positive aspects of their life may increase the perceived value of natural rewards – processes that may be diminished in those facing chronic pain or addiction – which may in turn help them to control opioid cravings.”

It is thrilling to see that this line of research is making a positive impact on the scientific community, and of course, the ultimate aim of this work is to alleviate human suffering.

drericgarland Addiction, Mental Health, MORE, Neuroscience, Opioids, Research

News: Dr. Garland’s Article Ranked in 93rd Percentile! – Mindfulness Training Targets Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Addiction at the Attention-Appraisal-Emotion Interface

An article I published with my colleagues Brett Froeliger from MUSC and Matthew Howard from UNC Chapel Hill in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry entitled “Mindfulness training targets neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction at the attention-appraisal-emotion interface” was designated in the 93rd percentile of 3,480,147 articles tracked by Altmetric. The Altmetric score is a measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that this article has received. The paper details the model depicted below.

mindfulness centered regulation

In this review paper, we describe how mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) may target neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction at the attention-appraisal-emotion interface. Empirical evidence is presented suggesting that MBIs ameliorate addiction by enhancing cognitive regulation of a number of key processes, including: clarifying cognitive appraisal and modulating negative emotions to reduce perseverative cognition and emotional arousal; enhancing metacognitive awareness to regulate drug-use action schema and decrease addiction attentional bias; promoting extinction learning to uncouple drug-use triggers from conditioned appetitive responses; reducing cue-reactivity and increasing cognitive control over craving; attenuating physiological stress reactivity through parasympathetic activation; and increasing savoring to restore natural reward processing. Treatment and research implications of our neurocognitive framework are presented. We conclude by offering a temporally sequenced description of neurocognitive processes targeted by MBIs through a hypothetical case study. Our neurocognitive framework has implications for the optimization of addiction treatment with MBIs.

The paper is free for download here.

drericgarland Addiction, Chronic Pain, MORE, Neuroscience, Opioids, Research

Neurophysiological Evidence for Remediation of Reward Processing Deficits in Chronic Pain and Opioid Misuse Following Treatment with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement

A new and important research study from my lab was recently accepted for publication in the respected Journal of Behavioral Medicine. This paper, which I wrote with my colleagues Brett Froeliger, Ph.D., and Matthew Howard, Ph.D., describes neurophysiological findings from a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) for chronic pain patients who had been prescribed long-term opioids for pain management. To my knowledge, this exploratory study is the first in the scientific literature to demonstrate that a mindfulness-based intervention can increase electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to natural, healthy pleasures in life.

MORE Reward ERPIn this study, individuals suffering from various chronic pain conditions were randomly assigned to participate in MORE or a social support group led by a therapist. Participants in the MORE group received 8 weeks of instruction in applying mindfulness-oriented techniques to alleviate pain and craving while strengthening positive emotions and the sense of reward and meaning in  life. This latter aspect of MORE may be critically important. A large body of research suggests that as chronic pain and addiction progresses, people may become less physiologically responsive to natural pleasure. As their brains become less sensitive to naturally-rewarding experiences, they get less enjoyment out of life. In the absence of positive feelings, they suffer worse from emotional and physical pain, and ultimately may feel compelled to take drugs (such as opioids) to achieve a normal sense of well-being.

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Savoring the majestic beauty of the wilderness.

To enhance the sense of reward in life, participants were taught a mindful savoring practice, which involved focusing attention intensely on the sensory features (e.g., sight, sound, smell, or touch) of a pleasant experience or object (e.g., a beautiful nature scene like a sunset or the feeling of connection with a loved one) while noticing, appreciating, and absorbing any positive emotions arising in response to the pleasant event. For example, in one meditation session, participants were taught to mindfully focus on the colors, textures, and scents of a bouquet of fresh flowers, and to absorb and appreciate the emotions of contentment and joy arising from this savoring practice. Participants were asked to practice savoring in everyday life as part of a weekly homework assignment (along with a daily practice of mindful breathing meditation).

Although people tend to savor beauty naturally, we hoped that training in MORE could enhance savoring, and thereby increase the sensitivity of the brain to naturally-rewarding experiences. As an indicator of this enhanced savoring ability, we hypothesized that MORE would increase brain responses to images representing such positive experiences. To measure this in the lab, we used a computer to present participants with a series of positive photos representing naturally-rewarding objects and events (e.g., smiling babies, beautiful nature scenes, intimate couples in love) and a series of neutral photos (e.g., kitchen items, household objects, neutral faces) presented for 6 seconds each. During this task, we measured EEG brain activity at the scalp (the parietal site Pz) that were time-locked to the onset of the image. We were particularly interested in the component of the EEG known as the late positive potential (LPP), a brain response that tends to occur between 400 – 1000 ms after an emotional image is displayed. The LPP is known to be enhanced to positive images relative to neutral images in healthy individuals, whereas opiate addicts show reduced EEG brain responses to positive images (Lubman et al., 2008; 2009). In addition to measuring brain activity, we also asked participants to rate how positive they felt after viewing each photograph, and how much they desired or craved opioids in general.

In line with our hypothesis, we found that relative to the control group, MORE significantly increased the LPP brain activity to positive images relative to neutral images. In other words, participants showed enhanced brain responses while viewing naturally-rewarding stimuli following treatment with MORE. In addition, patients who exhibited the largest increases in LPP brain response to positive images experienced the greatest increases in positive emotions while viewing those images. Also, individuals who experienced the biggest increases in brain response to positive images experienced the greatest reduction in craving for opioids. These findings are important because they suggest 1) that MORE may help people to become more sensitive to naturally-rewarding objects and events, and 2) as people learn to experience greater pleasure from healthy and meaningful experiences in life, they may feel less of a need to take addictive drugs.

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Brain regions involved in emotional experience like the ventral striatum (VS), amygdala (Amy) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) become dysregulated in addiction.

My colleagues and I recently advanced a neurocognitive model that suggests that MORE may alter the function of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system, and in particular, target activity in the ventral striatum, a brain structure involved in experiencing both natural pleasure and pleasure associated with drug use. Numerous studies have shown that the ventral striatum functions abnormally in people suffering from addiction. MORE may restore normal function in this brain area, although studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are needed to test this hypothesis.

Taken together, results from this new study, in combination with my previously published findings on cardiac-autonomic responses to positive stimuli, suggest that MORE may ameliorate deficits in natural reward processing among chronic patients taking long-term opioids by strengthening their ability to pay attention to healthy objects and events. Restoration of the ability to extract a sense of reward, fulfillment, and meaning out of everyday pleasures may be crucial to the ability to self-generate positive emotions and to resilience itself (Garland, Fredrickson, et al., 2010). More rigorous and larger-scale research is needed to test my hypothesis that focusing one’s attentional lens to more richly process the pleasurable, interesting, and meaningful experiences in life may make the painful and dissatisfying ones insignificant by comparison.

 Eric Garland

drericgarland Addiction, Neuroscience, Research

New Paper Accepted for Publication: Mindfulness Training Targets Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Addiction at the Attention-Appraisal-Emotion Interface

mindfulness centered regulation
Neurocognitive Model of Mindfulness-Centereted Regulation (Garland, Froeliger, & Howard, 2014)

My colleagues Brett Froeliger, Matthew Howard, and I recently authored an invited conceptual review paper (FREE TO DOWNLOAD) for a special issue of Frontiers in Psychiatry: Addictive Disorders and Behavioral Dyscontrol. Prominent neuroscience models suggest that addictive behavior occurs when environmental stressors and drug-relevant cues activate a cycle of cognitive, affective, and psychophysiological mechanisms, including dysregulated interactions between bottom-up and top-down neural processes, that compel the user to seek out and use drugs. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) target pathogenic mechanisms of the risk chain linking stress and addiction. This review describes how MBIs may target neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction at the attention-appraisal-emotion interface. Empirical evidence is presented suggesting that MBIs ameliorate addiction by enhancing cognitive regulation of a number of key processes, including: clarifying cognitive appraisal and modulating negative emotions to reduce perseverative cognition and emotional arousal; enhancing metacognitive awareness to regulate drug-use action schema and decrease addiction attentional bias; promoting extinction learning to uncouple drug-use triggers from conditioned appetitive responses; reducing cue-reactivity and increasing cognitive control over craving; attenuating physiological stress reactivity through parasympathetic activation; and increasing savoring to restore natural reward processing. Treatment and research implications of our neurocognitive framework are presented. We conclude by offering a temporally sequenced description of neurocognitive processes targeted by MBIs through a hypothetical case study. Our neurocognitive framework has implications for the optimization of addiction treatment with MBIs.

The conceptual framework outlined in this paper clarifies and contextualizes the recent results from our randomized controlled trial of Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement as a treatment for prescription opioid misuse and chronic pain.

drericgarland Addiction, Chronic Pain, Mental Health, Neuroscience, Opioids, Research

New Paper Accepted for Publication! The Downward Spiral of Chronic Pain, Prescription Opioid Misuse, and Addiction: Cognitive, Affective, and Neuropsychopharmacologic Pathways

My colleagues and I recently had a new paper accepted for publication in the highly esteemed, international journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. This paper draws upon current neuropsychopharmacologic research to provide a conceptual framework of the downward spiral leading to opioid misuse and addiction among chronic pain patients taking prescription opioids for pain relief. In brief, we theorize that addictive use of opioids is the outcome of a cycle initiated by chronic pain and negative emotions, leading to attentional hypervigilance for pain and drug cues, dysfunctional connectivity between self-referential and cognitive control networks in the brain, and allostatic dysregulation of stress and reward circuitry. We conclude the paper by introducing Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) as a potentially effective approach to disrupting the downward spiral. This is a particularly exciting publication for our research team, because it lays the theoretical groundwork for developing new and innovative efforts to help people recover from chronic pain and opioid addiction.

drericgarland Mental Health, Neuroscience, Research

Leading-Edge Science Supports the Notion of Recovery

Image By Sandy Burns

Over the past several decades there has been an explosion of research demonstrating that our feelings and thoughts are closely tied to the function of our brains, so much so that the 1990s were heralded as the “Decade of the Brain” by the Library of Congress and the National Institutes of Health. Neuroscience has come to have a powerful influence on our concepts of mental health, leading many people to believe that forms of psychological suffering like depression, anxiety, and addiction are caused by “biochemical brain imbalances.” While this view has removed a great deal of the stigma that was once associated with chronic mental health problems, it also may send the implicit and unfortunate message that change and recovery is not possible. If depression, anxiety, and addiction are diseases of the brain, how can anyone possibly change their brain? Isn’t the function and structure of the brain, like any other organ, determined by genes and fixed from birth?

The answer emerging from neuroscience research of the past decade is an unequivocal “NO!” We now know that the brain grows and changes throughout childhood, adolescence, and even into adulthood and old age! A number of factors can stimulate changes in the brain, known as neuroplasticity, including stress, diet, exercise, and even learning experiences. So, if chronic states of depression, anxiety, and addiction are partially the result of brain dysfunction (and, to be clear, a number of scholars have raised serious and important challenges to the neurobiological model of mental illness), many scientific studies demonstrate that learning and practicing new ways of thinking, acting, and responding to the challenges in our lives can change the way our brains function! Research is beginning to demonstrate that the very structure of our brains can be modified by mental training, not unlike the way people lift weights to build the size and strength of their muscles through physical training.

So what does all this groundbreaking and fascinating science mean for the idea of recovery from mental health and substance abuse problems? It explains how addiction treatment and mental health services can help people who have been diagnosed with a mental and/or substance use disorder to transcend their challenges to live a healthy and meaningful life. Innovative ways of helping people recover are continually being developed and tested, with promising results. The Trinity Institute for the Addictions at the FSU College of Social Work is dedicated to advancing new methods of promoting recovery.  Through my work at Trinity and through my prior work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I have developed a new type of mental training program for people struggling with addiction, mental health problems, and chronic pain called Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement, or MORE. MORE combines mindfulness training, cognitive-behavior therapy, and positive psychological principles into an integrative treatment strategy designed to help people increase self-control over their unhealthy habits and/or addictive behaviors, reduce their negative emotions (like feelings of anxiety, anger, and hopelessness), and improve their psychological well-being. I am currently conducting a clinical trial to test MORE as a way to combat chronic pain and problems related to prescription painkiller use – a growing epidemic in the U.S. and a frequent headliner in Florida’s news media.

Although this study is still in process, other studies suggest that mental training programs can be very helpful. For example, in previous research my colleagues and I found that mindfulness training reduced chronic pain symptoms by 38 percent and psychological stress by 31 percent! Another one of our studies indicated that mindfulness training helped people struggling with alcoholism to recover after being exposed to addictive triggers by calming their nervous system reactivity back towards baseline levels.  Other research suggests that mental training programs including cognitive-behavior therapy and mindfulness training can alter brain function and significantly reduce the symptoms of depression and anxiety, often with lasting positive effects.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration defines recovery as “a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential” (SAMHSA, 2011). The latest neuroscience findings on neuroplasticity and results from clinical research on psychological therapies like mindfulness training and cognitive-behavior therapy provide strong evidence for the notion that recovery from mental health problems and substance abuse is possible. Time and time again, cutting-edge science and clinical findings reveal a simple, hopeful, and powerful truth: treatment is effective, and people do recover.