Addiction: The Biopsychosocial Model

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Addiction is a complex issue with many aspects to it. Today the most common view of addiction is through the biopsychosocial model. It looks at addiction through the three most important influencers; biological, psychological, and social. This model is an accurate and an effective way to view addiction because it understands that addiction is not one or the other, it is a mixture of components that create the reality of each individual addict. Today, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) describes substance use disorder (SUD) as “a problematic pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress” (Hart & Ksir, 2015). One heavily influential factor of addiction is poverty. In 2015, 43.1 million people were …show more content…
This is because health care is not always readily available to people in poverty (McCabe & Wahler, 2016). Health care is considered one of the most expensive parts associated with substance use disorder. In National survey on Drug Use and Health, when asked for the reasons participants did not receive substance use treatment when they believed they needed treatment, 37.3 % responded because of “no health coverage and could not afford the cost” (SAMSHA, 2013). Unfortunately, this is a sad reality for many low-income individuals. Over 74% of federal addiction-related spending goes to medical costs. The U.S. government spends over 30 times more money on medical expenses related to SUDs than it does for areas that might reduce the overall expense of SUDs such as research, treatment, and prevention (McCabe & Wahler, …show more content…
This type of treatment is called “contingency management”. This comes from the concepts of behaviorism that have been widely studied in psychology (Hart & Ksir, 2015). Behaviorism suggest that our actions are largely influenced by what we are rewarded for in our environment. At a basic level, it is cause and effect relationships. We learn from each decision through positive and negative consequences. When using it for treatment, we look at it like the reward is contingent on the person either doing or not doing drugs. This can help people stop using substances. It has been shown that contingency management is one of the most successful treatments used today (Hart & Ksir,
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