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Behavioral Treatments for Adolescent Cannabis Use Disorder: a Rationale for Cognitive Retraining

  • Cannabis (A McRae-Clark and B Sherman, Section Editors)
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Adolescent cannabis use represents a significant public health concern. Cannabis experimentation typically begins in adolescence and increases the odds of meeting criteria for cannabis use disorder. Cannabis use disorder is associated with numerous short- and long-term adverse consequences for adolescents, highlighting the critical need for efficacious behavioral treatments. This brief review aims to synthesize the state of the behavioral treatment literature on adolescents with cannabis use disorder and to discuss new pathways to leverage neuroscience to inform novel targets for behavioral intervention.

Recent Findings

To date, effective treatment options for adolescent cannabis use disorder that have been tested in randomized controlled trials include cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational enhancement therapy, and multidimensional family therapy. However, established behavioral treatment approaches focus on higher-order cognitive control and have only been modestly effective.

Summary

There is a need to develop new pathways that translate neuroscience findings into novel targets for behavioral interventions.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grants, K12 DA031794, K23 AA025399, T32 AA013525, K23 AA025399, U01 DA041089, U01 DA041093, R21 DA047953, R01 DA042114, U01 DA041093, K12 HD055885, California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Grants Program Office of the University of California Grant 580264, and the National Health and Medical Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship Grant 1169377.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of California, 9500 Gilman Drive (0862) La Jolla, San Diego, CA, 92093-0862, USA

    Laika D. Aguinaldo, Clarisa Coronado & Joanna Jacobus

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

    Lindsay M. Squeglia, Kevin M. Gray & Rachel L. Tomko

  3. The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Briana Lees

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  1. Laika D. Aguinaldo
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  2. Lindsay M. Squeglia
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  3. Kevin M. Gray
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  4. Clarisa Coronado
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  7. Joanna Jacobus
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Correspondence to Laika D. Aguinaldo.

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Conflict of Interest

Dr. Gray reports consulting work for Pfizer, Inc., outside of the submitted work. Dr. Lees, Dr. Jacobus, Dr. Squeglia, Dr. Aguinaldo, and Dr. Tomko declare no conflicts of interest.

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Key points

1. Adolescence is a developmental period of rapid physiological, psychological, and neurocognitive changes that often coincides with the experimentation and use of cannabis.

2. Adolescent cannabis use disorder leads to short- and long-term adverse consequences. However, behavioral treatment options are limited and have only been modestly effective.

3. Further research is needed to translate neuroscience research and enhance behavioral treatments to reduce the considerable public health burden of adolescent cannabis use disorder.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Cannabis

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Aguinaldo, L.D., Squeglia, L.M., Gray, K.M. et al. Behavioral Treatments for Adolescent Cannabis Use Disorder: a Rationale for Cognitive Retraining. Curr Addict Rep 6, 437–442 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-019-00287-7

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