Prescription opioid misuse among chronic pain patients is undergirded by self-regulatory deficits, affective distress, and opioid-cue reactivity. Dispositional mindfulness has been associated with enhanced self-regulation, lower distress, and adaptive autonomic responses following drug-cue exposure. We hypothesized that dispositional mindfulness might serve as a protective factor among opioid-treated chronic pain patients.

Reducing neuroticism in young adults is likely to reduce future psychopathology and improve quality of life. One method of reducing neuroticism may be mindfulness training.

In 2006, Eric Garland began to contemplate developing a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) for the treatment of addiction. At the time, there were no empirically supported mindfulness-based treatments for addiction, and few studies of mindfulness for addictive behavior had been published.

Mindfulness meditation is a self-regulatory practice premised on sustaining non-reactive awareness of arising sensory events that reliably reduces pain. Yet, the specific analgesic mechanisms supporting mindfulness have not been comprehensively disentangled from the potential non-specific factors supporting this technique.

Evidence suggests that mindfulness influences posttraumatic reactions; however, it may also be that experiencing a potentially traumatic event impacts mindfulness. Trauma exposure is believed to disrupt an individual’s assumptive world and alter attentional, cognitive, and affective qualities that have also been linked to mindfulness. Thus, posttraumatic reconstruction of an assumptive world may influence mindfulness.