Active clinical trials for "Substance-Related Disorders"

The purpose of this study is to establish a new treatment (repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS)) for Veterans with stimulant use disorder (SUD). Despite the large public health burden imposed by SUD, there is currently no FDA-approved or widely recognized effective somatic treatment. rTMS may be a promising treatment option for SUD. In this study, we will demonstrate the feasibility of applying rTMS to Veterans with SUD, examine the efficacy of rTMS in the treatment of SUD, and explore biomarkers that may guide patient selection for rTMS treatment and predict treatment response.

Project STAR aims to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and initial efficacy of a CBT-I supplement to outpatient alcohol and substance use treatment.

This study will use a randomized control trial (RCT) design to administer two versions of a multisession remote behavioral intervention for youth seeking Emergency Department care for a violent injury with the goal to reduce their violence involvement and associated negative behaviors and consequences. The study examines two versions of the remote therapy intervention - a standard RTI (S-RTI) and an Artificial Intelligence RTI (AI-RTI). The application of a just-in-time adaptive strategy to address youth violence is an important and novel direction for this research, particularly given the need to understand best practices for delivering behavioral interventions among lower-income populations.

Individual with anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder often use alcohol in ways that could cause them harm. Treating both mental health concerns and alcohol use at the same time can help reduce difficulties engaging in multiple treatments. The investigators are evaluating how a cognitive behavioral therapy program that helps Veterans with anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and alcohol use at the same time can help improve the participants lives.

In this proposal, the investigators extend their previous SPiRE feasibility and preliminary effectiveness study to examine STEP-Home efficacy in a RCT design. This novel therapy will target the specific needs of a broad range of underserved post-9/11 Veterans. It is designed to foster reintegration by facilitating meaningful improvement in the functional skills most central to community participation: emotional regulation (ER), problem solving (PS), and attention functioning (AT). The skills trained in the STEP-Home workshop are novel in their collective use and have not been systematically applied to a Veteran population prior to the investigators' SPiRE study. STEP-Home will equip Veterans with skills to improve daily function, reduce anger and irritability, and assist reintegration to civilian life through return to work, family, and community, while simultaneously providing psychoeducation to promote future engagement in VA care. The innovative nature of the STEP-Home intervention is founded in the fact that it is: (a) an adaptation of an established and efficacious intervention, now applied to post-9/11 Veterans; (b) nonstigmatizing (not "therapy" but a "skills workshop" to boost acceptance, adherence and retention); (c) transdiagnostic (open to all post-9/11 Veterans with self-reported reintegration difficulties; Veterans often have multiple mental health diagnoses, but it is not required for enrollment); (d) integrative (focus on the whole person rather than specific and often stigmatizing mental and physical health conditions); (e) comprised of Veteran-specific content to teach participants cognitive behavioral skills needed for successful reintegration (which led to greater acceptability in feasibility study); (f) targets anger and irritability, particularly during interactions with civilians; (g) emphasizes psychoeducation (including other available treatment options for common mental health conditions); and (h) challenges beliefs/barriers to mental health care to increase openness to future treatment and greater mental health treatment utilization. Many Veterans who participated in the development phases of this workshop have gone on to trauma or other focused therapies, or taken on vocational (work/school/volunteer) roles after STEP-Home. The investigators have demonstrated that the STEP-Home workshop is feasible and results in pre-post change in core skill acquisition that the investigators demonstrated to be directly associated with post-workshop improvement in reintegration status in their SPiRE study. Given the many comorbidities of this cohort, the innovative treatment addresses multiple aspects of mental health, cognitive, and emotional function simultaneously and bolsters reintegration in a short-term group to maximize cost-effectiveness while maintaining quality of care.

The fastest growing HIV epidemics globally are driven by injection drug use, but only a small percentage of HIV-positive people who inject drugs (PWID) have achieved viral suppression. The proposed project will adapt a couple-based antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence intervention for PWID and assess the feasibility and acceptability of conducting dried blood spot testing to objectively measure ART adherence as part of an intervention in a clinical setting. This project advances HIV intervention science by providing an intervention that leverages social support within the dyad to improve ART adherence among PWID, which could lead to increased viral suppression, thus decreasing HIV transmission and HIV-related morbidity and mortality.

In prior studies, the investigative team developed a combined computer- and text message-delivered personalized-feedback intervention (iENDURE) designed to enhance motivation and improve tolerance of distress to support the early phase of buprenorphine treatment. Specific aims of this subsequent study include conducting a preliminary randomized controlled trial with 80 participants to examine the efficacy of iENDURE relative to Treatment-as-Usual (TAU).

Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a fast-growing and devastating epidemic in the US with many mothers suffering cravings, depression, impaired interpersonal interactions and maladaptive parenting behaviors that may lead to child maltreatment and costly utilization of foster care. This interdisciplinary multisite project will begin with the high risk R61 phase, in which the investigators will administer the parenting intervention "Mom Power" to mothers with OUD during the first 6 months postpartum and look for effects on drug use, mood and brain mechanisms; and, If validated, the investigators will continue in the R33 with more brain mechanism investigation and outcome studies a larger sample. The completion of this grant will clarify the effects of parenting intervention for mothers with OUD, and yield brain-based biomarkers that may be connected with inexpensive measures toward improved treatment of families suffering OUD, their children and society - which ultimately bears much of the cost for the common trans-generational problems of peripartum drug use.

Every year, alcohol causes 3 million deaths worldwide. Even though a lot of treatments already exist, many of them are characterized by a high percentage of drop-out or relapse. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a NIBS, is receiving increased attention as a possible new addiction treatment. However, little consensus exists in the concrete parameters (e.g. montage, current, intensity). Moreover, a lot of tDCS research focuses on subjective outcomes, like the report of craving, which are more prone to different biases and fluctuations. In this study, we aim to investigate the effect of HD-tDCS, a more focal stimulation variant, on AUDs. Using this intervention, stimulation can be restricted to one hemisphere, controlling for possible inhibition effects of the cathode. A between-subject design will be carried out, including patients with an AUD. Participants will receive 5 sessions of either real or sham right anodal HD-tDCS over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Craving will be accounted for at baseline and after every stimulation session. Moreover, we will measure the activity of the brain in rest and during two inhibition tasks (Go/NoGo and cue reactivity task). This objective measure will be carried out both before (baseline) and at two time points after the stimulation, to measure effects on both the short and longer term. One month after the intervention, abstinence will be checked through a follow-up phone call. Through this study, we aim to describe positive effects of right dlPFC stimulation on craving, abstinence, and EEG measures.

The aim of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of long-term and short-term app-based self-guided psychological interventions to reduce craving and lapse risk in users with substance use disorder or problematic substance use (alcohol and stimulants). Participants are randomly assigned to thirteen different groups to compare the effectiveness of particular long-term interventions. A questionnaire battery assessment is administered (1) at baseline in the first week following onboarding in; (2) after 5 weeks; (3) after six months. In addition, longitudinal data on several variables related to craving and lapse risk are collected daily using ecological momentary assessment.