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Project Summary
OUD medications buprenorphine and methadone are effective in improving OUD treatment outcomes; however, there remains great need to further improve OUD recovery through innovative behavioral and psychosocial approaches. In particular, interventions that focus on making recovery more reinforcing, enjoyable, and meaningful.
One possibility is the therapeutic use of humor to support people in recovery. Randomized controlled trials of humor interventions (i.e., in-person humor trainings and web-based approaches) have been shown to be effective in people with clinical depression and inpatients with schizophrenia (receiving antipsychotic medication), showing improvements in positive moods and self-efficacy, decreases in depression, stress, and anxiety. However, humor interventions have yet to be tested in substance-use populations but salient mechanisms are likely vital to recovery, aligning with qualitative work on humor in OUD recovery. This includes the use of humor to promote enjoyment, coping with depression, stress, or anxiety, and other novel benefits such as combating self-stigma and promoting positive social connections with people in recovery.
This project aims to adapt effective components of in-person and web-based humor interventions in developing the Humor and Addiction recovery (HA!) intervention, a mobile health app developed with and for people in recovery (including the study PI who is in OUD recovery). We will recruit a diverse sample of adults (based on age, race, and gender; n = 20) from two outpatient OUD treatment clinics to attend two study visits. We will gather quantitative and qualitative feedback on acceptability and ratings of humorousness of the HA! intervention framework and content during the first study visit (Aim 1). In the second visit, participants will install the HA! mobile app on their phones and use it for one week, providing ratings on useability and engagement at the end of the week (Aim 2). Our goal is to take feedback learned from this study to further refine the HA! mobile app and then to potentially pilot the HA! mobile app in a larger sample to examine early signals of efficacy in supporting recovery.