Current status of professional training in the addictions

Abstract

Addictions training curricula within traditional graduate and postgraduate programs of professional disciplines lag behind those devoted to other disorders. After presenting a brief historical overview of addictions training in the United States, this paper focuses on current addictions training practices for each of the major health care professions, highlighting both recent advancements as well as shortcomings, particularly with respect to the ability to disseminate recent empirically tested addiction treatments. New psychosocial and pharmacotherapies for addictive disorders are then discussed which would be better disseminated within training programs with enhanced addictions training components. The paper concludes with a discussion of and recommendations for enhancing substance abuse training and knowledge dissemination.