Title: What’s new in the treatment of traumatic stress and substance use disorders?
Over two decades, clinicians and researchers have become increasingly aware of the significant relationship between early and ongoing trauma exposure, and substance use of all kinds. High rates of traumatic stress exposure in childhood and across the lifespan have been linked to misuse of alcohol and other substances—and for some, the subsequent development of addictive disorders. An overview of affective, cognitive and neurobiological models that have been advanced to understand links between traumatic stress and addiction will be presented. Trauma processing and skill-based techniques have been applied to address PTSD among those struggling with substance use recovery. This talk provides a conceptualization of behavioral and pharmacological approaches that have been developed to concurrently treat traumatic stress and addictions, elucidating metrics for evaluating when our outcomes should be considered clinically significant. The current state of science will be reviewed critically, identifying key implications and highlighting limitations of the existing evidence base of randomized clinical trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses in order to chart the course forward for the next decades of clinicians and researchers. Current barriers to dissemination of evidence-based trauma treatment models in community substance use treatment will also be discussed.
Link to Denise’s webpage at Rutgers: