Mindful awareness in body-oriented therapy as an adjunct to women’s substance use disorder treatment: A pilot feasibility study

Summary & key facts

Researchers tested a therapy called Mindful Awareness in Body‑Oriented Therapy, or MABT, as an extra treatment for women already in care for substance use problems. MABT uses hands-on and mind‑body methods to help people notice signals from their body and learn self‑care for managing emotions. In a small, carefully controlled study, 46 women were randomly assigned to get eight weekly MABT sessions plus their usual care or to get their usual care alone. The women who got MABT had fewer days of substance use right after the treatment. Nine months later, the MABT group also showed improvements in eating disorder symptoms, depression, anxiety, stress, dissociation, and some physical symptoms. Th

Key facts:

• MABT is a one‑on‑one therapy that combines hands‑on techniques and mind‑body practices to help people notice body signals and build self‑care skills for managing emotions.
• The study randomly assigned women in substance use treatment to either eight weekly MABT sessions plus usual care or to usual care alone.
• Sixty‑one women were screened and 46 enrolled in the study.
• The main result was that women who received MABT reported fewer days of substance use at the end of the treatment period compared with those who got usual care only.
• At a 9‑month follow‑up, the MABT group showed better scores on several secondary outcomes, including eating disorder symptoms, depression, anxiety, perceived stress, dissociation, and the frequency of physical symptoms.
• The authors concluded that it is feasible to add MABT to women’s substance use treatment and that MABT deserves further testing in larger trials, because this was a small pilot study and its results are preliminary.

Topics

Eating Disorders and Behaviors Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

Categories

Clinical Psychology Psychology Social Sciences

Tags

Adjunct Anxiety Clinical psychology Depression (economics) Economics Internal medicine Linguistics Macroeconomics Medicine Philosophy Physical therapy Psychiatry Psychology Randomized controlled trial Substance abuse Substance use

Substances

Other

Conditions & symptoms

Anxiety Addiction or harmful habbits Anxiety or worry Feeling disconnected from others Poor appetite or overeating Sadness or low mood