Causes of Addiction: Biopsychosocial Model, Personality Theories and Neuropsychology

Moreover, the model does not solve the problem of free choice, as the model still, even at the systems (macro) level, has causally sufficient preceding conditions. The Biopsychosocial Model of Addiction offers a more comprehensive approach than the traditional biomedical model by addressing the biological, psychological, and social factors contributing to addiction (Skewes & Gonzalez, 2013). While the biomedical model focuses on addiction as a brain disease driven by genetic or biochemical abnormalities, it often overlooks the significant roles of mental health, trauma, and environmental influences (Skewes & Gonzalez, 2013).

IPT for Individuals with Co-occurring Disorders

Engel articulated the model as a version of biological systems theory, but his work is better interpreted as the beginnings of a richly nuanced philosophy of medicine. We can make this reinterpretation by connecting Engel’s work with the tradition of American pragmatism. Engel initiates inquiry like a pragmatist, he understands theory and philosophy like a pragmatist, he justifies beliefs like a pragmatist, and he understands the world like a pragmatist. By drawing out these similarities, medical and psychiatric scholars can revitalize the biopsychosocial model, and they can open medicine and psychiatry to a rich philosophic heritage and a flourishing interdisciplinary tradition.

This is because, as the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) shows, addiction is a complicated puzzle. Many pieces, including cultural norms, social circles, situations, personality, biology, and even beliefs, fit together. Four decades after the publication of the concept of Engel’s “biopsychosocial model” for medicine and its subsequent enthusiastic embrace by psychiatry, it is widely accepted as a valid alternative to the reductionism of biological psychiatry. However, unlike models in mainstream science, the original model has not been developed or expanded. Despite widespread efforts to “talk it up,” Engel’s “biopsychosocial model” has failed to have any lasting impact on psychiatry.

What Exactly Is the Biopsychosocial Model of Addiction?

By improving communication and resolving conflicts, patients can develop healthier connections and support systems that reduce their risk of relapse. Regular engagement in IPT not only fosters self-awareness and coping skills but also mitigates feelings of loneliness and depression often linked to substance use. IPT targets current relationship issues rather than digging into past developmental problems. It effectively addresses conflicts, life transitions, unresolved grief, and challenges in forming or maintaining social connections. By focusing on the present interpersonal landscape, IPT facilitates clearer communicating, better emotional regulation, and the enhancement of social support networks—key components for individuals navigating recovery. IPT emphasizes the need for individuals to recognize and address relationship issues that contribute to their substance use.

• Despite these developments, the science is still in its early stages, and theories about how addiction emerges are neither universally accepted nor completely understood.
• This means that the person needs more and more of the addictive substance or behavior to experience the same level of pleasure.
• They tend to exaggerate their successes and contributions while avoiding acknowledging their failures and mistakes.
• They support continued use and reinforce denial that a problem with alcohol or drugs exists.

Feeling State Addiction Protocol: A Revolutionary Approach to Treating Addictive…

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The protocol of this study was approved by the institutional review board of the School of Basic Medicine, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Informed consent was obtained from all participants after a detailed explanation of the study objectives. The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the 15 interviewees who answered the advertisement for this study and provided their valuable insight into what it’s like to receive care in Vermont.

Participants indicated that PCC fostered engagement and often characterized MOUD clinics they no longer attended as lacking in PCC. Themes related to Therapeutic Alliance were the most prevalent and suggest pathways to retention. Individualizing care through flexible appointment scheduling was strongly valued, while inflexible scheduling fostered fear of not getting medication. Some participants indicated they were less likely to remain in care when providers did not include them in decisions about medication type, dose, or formulation. Both social norms and laws influence attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs of the effects of substances and considerably affect consumption rates (Babor, Caetano, Casswell et al. 2003; Hawkins, Catalano, and Miller 1992).

The social burden of illicit drug addiction is estimated at billions of dollars per year (Fisher, Oviedo-Joekes, Blanken, et al. 2007). Research that involves providing drugs to individuals living with an addiction must negotiate between science, ethics, politics, law, and evidence-based medicine. For instance, despite its cost-effectiveness and ease on burden of disease, the supervised injection site (SIS) in the Downtown Eastside area of Vancouver, Canada has been repeatedly threatened with closure by politicians. The threats are based on emotional and moral attitudes towards the existence of the SIS and drug addicts generally, as opposed to empirical evidence (Des Jarlais, Arasteh, and Hagan 2008). The social domain tends to account only for proximal environmental and social properties. The social does not necessarily include macrosocial circumstances, such as governmental social policies, drug policy or drug ‘strategy’ that has a direct effect on substance use rates and patterns.

Cognitive Factors

This can extend to legal substances such as alcohol or tobacco (including, in recent years, the increased prohibition against cigarette smoking in public spaces and its growing social unacceptability in private spaces). As a result, mainstream culture does not—for the most part—have an accepted role for most types of substance use, unlike many older cultures, which may accept use, for example, as part of specific religious rituals. Thus, people who experiment with drugs in the United States usually do so in highly marginalized social sober house settings, which can contribute to the development of substance use disorders (Wilcox 1998). Along with genetics, another contributing factor to the risk of addiction is one’s psychological composition. Some individuals may be more affected by the rewarding effects of drugs of abuse because they are trying their best to regulate painful emotions. Males in low self-acceptance populations are more likely to exhibit lower self-acceptance than females.

The prominent belief several decades ago was that addiction resulted from bad choices stemming from a morally weak person. In fact, in 1956, the American Medical Association declared alcoholism a disease that should be addressed with medical and psychological approaches (Mann et al., 2000). These areas https://northiowatoday.com/2025/01/27/sober-house-rules-what-you-should-know-before-moving-in/ are crucial as IPT aims to improve patient relationships while helping them cope with grief and navigate major life changes, which is particularly beneficial for individuals experiencing depression. Once enrolled, participants were asked general questions about their sex, race, gender, ethnicity, and treatment history.

Drug addicts with an education level of elementary school and below are more likely to have low levels of self-acceptance. Education is an important form of cultural capital that can influence an individual’s status and opportunities in society 53. Less educated drug addicts may face social competitive disadvantages due to lack of cultural capital, affecting their self-acceptance and perception.

The model provides you with a framework to dynamically engage with clients wherever they are on the addiction continuum – from absent, mild, moderate to severe – and adjust treatment/care as clients’ needs change and evolve. In the end, the biopsychosocial model reminds us that addiction is not just about the substance. It’s about the person using the substance, their unique experiences, their brain chemistry, their thought patterns, their relationships, and their environment.

How Samba Recovery Supports Clients in Managing Triggers

• It allows for the development of more positive behaviours by understanding alternatives, and more possibilities and gives opportunities for making positive decisions with those options.
• The gender role socialization theory proposed by Gayle Rubin suggests that males and females are socially assigned different role expectations and behavioral norms as they grow up.
• These traits are considered the basic dimensions of human personality and can be used to describe a person’s tendencies across different situations.
• Education is an important form of cultural capital that can influence an individual’s status and opportunities in society 53.
• In buying (and perhaps selling) drugs, individuals can find excitement that is missing in their lives.

Contact us today to learn more about our programs and how we can help you or your loved one on the road to recovery. It’s important to remember that social and environmental factors interact with biological vulnerabilities. For instance, someone with a genetic predisposition to addiction may be more likely to develop an addiction if they also experience significant childhood trauma.