Incentivizing recovery: Why contingency management works to treat addiction, with Lara Coughlin, PhD, and Michael McDonell, PhD

Angela Davis0:00

[instrumental music] Anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder. At least half of us will experience a mental illness in our lifetime. In a new podcast from Call to Mind, we hear about the mental health impact of stress, climate change, immigration, and more. I'm Angela Davis. Join me for conversations with people managing hardship and experts seeking solutions. From American Public Media comes Call to Mind. Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

Kim Mills· Host0:27

[instrumental music] In the US, more than half of drug overdose deaths now involve stimulants like methamphetamine and cocaine. There are no medications to treat stimulant addiction, but there is a behavioral treatment that works. Contingency management, which was developed by psychologists, involves giving people rewards such as money or gift cards in return for negative drug tests. It's a simple idea, yet despite decades of research showing that contingency management works, relatively few people who could benefit from it are able to access it. Now momentum is building to put it into practice at a larger scale. So why exactly do these interventions work? What are the psychological principles they're based on? Can contingency management be used to treat other addictions such as alcohol or tobacco? How does it interact with other treatments? And what are the barriers to moving it from research labs to the real world at large scale? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological