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.

Among opioid-treated chronic pain patients, deficient response inhibition in the context of emotional distress may contribute to maladaptive pain coping and prescription opioid misuse. Study tested the hypothesis that a mindfulness-based intervention, Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), can reduce the impact of clinically relevant, negative affective interference on response inhibition function in an opioid-treated chronic pain sample.

Mindfulness-based interventions target novel pain relief mechanisms not captured by legacy pain scales, including 1) cultivating awareness of pleasant and neutral sensations proximal to unpleasant sensations and 2) interoceptive mapping of sensation location and spatial distribution.

Both acute and chronic pain can disrupt reward processing. Moreover, prolonged prescription opioid use and depressed mood are common in chronic pain samples. Despite the prevalence of these risk factors for anhedonia, little is known about anhedonia in chronic pain populations. We conducted a large-scale, systematic study of anhedonia in chronic pain, focusing on its relationship with opioid use/misuse, pain severity, and depression.

This study demonstrates that female patients with opioid-treated chronic pain who have extensive ACE histories suffer from emotion dysregulation and cue-elicited craving.