Neuroscience-Informed Psychoeducation for Substance Use Disorder Treatment: From Brain Awareness to Brain Recovery Capital
Abstract
Substance use disorders continue to affect millions of people worldwide, yet a striking proportion never receive treatment. Poor awareness, internalized stigma, and neurobiological changes in the circuits responsible for self-monitoring all contribute to this gap in ways that conventional psychoeducation has not adequately addressed. Recent advances in addiction neuroscience offer a more precise and less stigmatizing language for understanding these barriers, one that reframes addiction as a brain disorder rather than a moral failure and opens new possibilities for how we educate patients about their condition. Neuroscience-informed psychoeducation, or NIPE, builds on this foundation. It integrates current addiction neuroscience into an educational program designed to improve insight, reduce shame, and strengthen motivation for treatment and recovery. This paper proposes a clinical stage-based NIPE framework organized around the Transtheoretical Model of Health Behavior Change, mapping specific educational content and delivery priorities to seven stages of the recovery trajectory. The goal is an approach that meets people where they actually are in both their motivational readiness and their neurobiological capacity to engage. An example of a NIPE package for recovery and future directions to deliver effective NIPE and promote brain recovery are discussed.
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BibTeX
@misc{rezapour2026neuroscienceinformed,
title = {{Neuroscience-Informed Psychoeducation for Substance Use Disorder Treatment: From Brain Awareness to Brain Recovery Capital}},
author = {Tara Rezapour and Alex Baldacchino and Andrew Dalley and Jamie Berry and Shweta Chilka and Marc L. Copersino and Ali Farhoudian and Jing Jin and Steven Powers and Timothy Grigsby},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/ptbcq_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ptbcq_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Neuroscience-Informed Psychoeducation for Substance Use Disorder Treatment: From Brain Awareness to Brain Recovery Capital
AU - Tara Rezapour
AU - Alex Baldacchino
AU - Andrew Dalley
AU - Jamie Berry
AU - Shweta Chilka
AU - Marc L. Copersino
AU - Ali Farhoudian
AU - Jing Jin
AU - Steven Powers
AU - Timothy Grigsby
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/ptbcq_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ptbcq_v1/
AB - Substance use disorders continue to affect millions of people worldwide, yet a striking proportion never receive treatment. Poor awareness, internalized stigma, and neurobiological changes in the circuits responsible for self-monitoring all contribute to this gap in ways that conventional psychoeducation has not adequately addressed. Recent advances in addiction neuroscience offer a more precise and less stigmatizing language for understanding these barriers, one that reframes addiction as a brain disorder rather than a moral failure and opens new possibilities for how we educate patients about their condition. Neuroscience-informed psychoeducation, or NIPE, builds on this foundation. It integrates current addiction neuroscience into an educational program designed to improve insight, reduce shame, and strengthen motivation for treatment and recovery. This paper proposes a clinical stage-based NIPE framework organized around the Transtheoretical Model of Health Behavior Change, mapping specific educational content and delivery priorities to seven stages of the recovery trajectory. The goal is an approach that meets people where they actually are in both their motivational readiness and their neurobiological capacity to engage. An example of a NIPE package for recovery and future directions to deliver effective NIPE and promote brain recovery are discussed.
ER -