Addiction spectrum disorder: a conceptual framework for comprehensive understanding of addictive disorders

TL;DR

The paper proposes a new framework to better understand addiction as a spectrum disorder with shared and distinct components.

Contribution

It introduces a conceptual model framing addiction as a spectrum with three core components.

Findings

Addictive disorders may form a spectrum with three key components: negative reinforcement, cue-induced responses, and food addiction as an intermediate.

The framework aims to unify understanding of substance use disorders, behavioral addictions, and food addiction.

This approach addresses the heterogeneity in current addiction classifications.

Abstract

The term addiction or addictive disorder refers to a psychiatric condition that is characterized impulsive and compulsive seeking targets or action executions despite negative consequences are expected to occur. However, it has been used to lump widely heterogeneous conditions, such as substance use disorders, behavioral addictions, and food addiction, together, which has been causing a serious problem in understanding and defining the addictive disorder. Here we deliberate a framework toward comprehensive understanding of addictive disorders that overcome the heterogeneities of substance use disorders, behavioral addictions, and a food addiction, by considering that addictive disorders could form a spectrum of disorders, consisting of three imperative components, specifically negative reinforcements in relation to compulsive seeking, cue-induced responses in relation to associative learning, and a food addiction as an intermediate phenotype between substance use disorders and behavioral addictions.

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