New Approaches to Pain and Mental Health Featured in NCCIH Talks

Dr. Eric Garland

This spring, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health offers several lectures on the theme of “Novel Approaches at the Intersection of Mental Health and Pain.” 

At the first talk, on Tuesday, Mar. 24, at 11 a.m. in Lipsett Amphitheater, Bldg. 10, Dr. Eric Garland will speak on “Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement: Restructuring Reward Processing in Addiction, Stress and Pain.” 

In some of our most pressing “diseases of despair,” such as addiction and chronic pain, the brain’s capacity to experience pleasure and extract meaning from natural sources becomes disrupted. Opioid misuse can become a way to try to hold onto a shrinking sense of well-being. 

Garland has developed a nondrug intervention for opioid misuse that unites mindfulness meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology. A member of the NIH HEAL Initiative multidisciplinary working group, Garland is professor and associate dean for research at the University of Utah College of Social Work, director of the Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development and a licensed psychotherapist. His Ph.D. in social work is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The lecture, which will be videocast, is part of NCCIH’s Integrative Medicine Research Lecture Series (see https://nccih.nih.gov/news/events/IMlectures). Two other lectures in the series are scheduled for May 11 and June 30.