Browsing by Author "Sentir, Alena"

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    Art Therapy in Opiate Use Disorder: Moving Toward an Integrated Treatment Framework
    (2021-05) Sentir, Alena; Misluk, Eileen
    Drug addiction is a major public health concern resulting in deleterious consequences to individuals and society. Yet, addiction is a recoverable disease with the right support. Although evidence-based treatments exist for opiate use disorder, many individuals remain treatment refractory and die from overdoses. These individuals often present to treatment with dual diagnosis and polysubstance use, which are conditions that increase client complexity and barriers to recovery. An integrative systematic literature review was conducted to examine how art therapy has been used in these populations and ways that it could be incorporated into current addiction neuroscience treatment. The culmination is a six-session proposal with the goal of increasing treatment retention in refractory populations. Through the framework of the Expressive Therapies Continuum and modern addiction neuroscience treatment, the proposal is theorized to integrate limbic to cortical functioning, stimulate motivation, increase empowerment, and support clients during recovery. Though the proposal gives special consideration to those with opiate use disorder in medication-assisted treatment, it inclusive of other substance use disorders and accounts for various client complexities, as well as being easily adaptable by an art therapist to different treatment settings.
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    Polysubstance addiction vulnerability in mental illness: Concurrent alcohol and nicotine self‐administration in the neurodevelopmental hippocampal lesion rat model of schizophrenia
    (Wiley, 2019) Sentir, Alena; Bell, Richard L.; Engleman, Eric A.; Chambers, R. Andrew; Psychiatry, School of Medicine
    Multiple addictions frequently occur in patients with mental illness. However, basic research on the brain‐based linkages between these comorbidities is extremely limited. Toward characterizing the first animal modeling of polysubstance use and addiction vulnerability in schizophrenia, adolescent rats with neonatal ventral hippocampal lesions (NVHLs) and controls had 19 weekdays of 1 hour/day free access to alcohol/sucrose solutions (fading from 10% sucrose to 10% alcohol/2% sucrose on day 10) during postnatal days (PD 35‐60). Starting in adulthood (PD 63), rats acquired lever pressing for concurrent oral alcohol (10% with 2% sucrose) and iv nicotine (0.015 mg/kg/injection) across 15 sessions. Subsequently, 10 operant extinction sessions and 3 reinstatement sessions examined drug seeking upon withholding of nicotine, then both nicotine and alcohol, then reintroduction. Adolescent alcohol consumption did not differ between NVHLs and controls. However, in adulthood, NVHLs showed increased lever pressing at alcohol and nicotine levers that progressed more strongly at the nicotine lever, even as most pressing by both groups was at the alcohol lever. In extinction, both groups showed expected declines in effort as drugs were withheld, but NVHLs persisted with greater pressing at both alcohol and nicotine levers. In reinstatement, alcohol reaccess increased pressing, with NVHLs showing greater nicotine lever activity overall. Developmental temporal‐limbic abnormalities that produce mental illness can thus generate adult polydrug addiction vulnerability as a mechanism independent from putative cross‐sensitization effects between addictive drugs. Further preclinical modeling of third‐order (and higher) addiction‐mental illness comorbidities may advance our understanding and treatment of these complex, yet common brain illnesses.