Substance abuse within college students is drastically increasing.
Mindfulness-based interventions can be beneficial to reduce prolonged substance abuse among these students. These effects are studied using a brief motivational and a parent-based intervention. Contemporary advances in addiction neuroscience have collateral increasing interest in the history of mental training practice of mindfulness meditation as a possible therapy for addiction and substance abuse. In the past decade, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been studied as a treatment for an array addictive behaviors, including drinking alcohols, smoking tobaccos and cigarettes, and the use of illegal substances like cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, but the government legalized the marijuana. Studies indicate that MBIs reduce substance abuse and addiction by modulating cognitive, effective ways, and psychophysiological processes integral to self-regulation and reward processing. This integrative review provides the basics for different suggestions regarding the future research needed to firmly establish the efficacy of MBIs and elucidate the mechanistic pathways by which these therapies ameliorate addiction.
