Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior in Substance Use and Addiction

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue seeks original research on effective treatment strategies promoting emotional and cognitive-behavioral health, as well as healthy coping mechanisms, to improve care and outcomes for people living with addiction.

Life experiences such as adverse childhood experiences can trigger emotions that prompt coping responses that may include substance use. Psychoactive substances negatively impact the limbic system and the amygdala, influencing emotional processing and resulting in a vicious cycle of use, abuse and disorder. Mindfulness training plays a prominent role in the prevention and treatment of substance use disorders. Individuals with substance use disorders struggle with cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, impairing their ability to adapt and resist cravings. Chronic substance use alters brain regions like the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, causing long-term cognitive dysfunction. Interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and neurorehabilitation, can address these deficits and improve recovery outcomes.

Understanding how people develop and maintain substance use is increasingly guided by research on behavior, responses to rewards, stress and cues in their environment. Cognitive-behavioral therapy involves coping skills, decision-making and healthy behaviors shown to reduce substance use and support long-term recovery. These three dimensions play a pivotal role in understanding and providing evidence-based treatment in the fields of Psychiatry/Psychology.

This Special Issue will complement the existing literature by integrating emotional, cognitive and behavioral perspectives that are often studied in isolation. Although substantial research has examined each domain’s role in substance use disorders, fewer efforts have synthesized these dimensions to clarify how they collectively influence addiction trajectories and treatment outcomes. By highlighting work that spans neurobiological mechanisms, clinical interventions and applied coping strategies, this issue aims to provide a more unified, evidence-based framework to inform future research and clinical practice.

Dr. Salome Kapella-Mshigeni
Dr. Eunice Kimunai
Dr. Tam Villar
Guest Editors

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