Education and Training in Substance Use Disorders: A Roadmap to Move Forward

Health service providers often receive little training in the treatment of substance use disorders (SUDs). This poses a significant public health concern and ultimately causes people afflicted with SUDs to receive inadequate care. The current commentary introduces and integrates the 9 articles that constitute a much-needed special issue dedicated to describing feasible ways to address this problem. Each article conveys a range of exciting possibilities focused on improving training in and dissemination of addiction treatments. In this commentary, we highlight 4 underlying themes that we identify as present across articles. First, there is a vital need to train providers in SUD treatment. Second, concrete steps can be taken to address this goal throughout the training process (i.e., upon entrance to graduate school through internship completion) when motivation and institutional support are sufficient. Third, programs where faculty are engaging in addiction research provide opportunities through coursework and research involvement for trainees to gain knowledge in crucial topics such as the course of SUDs, empirically supported addiction treatments, ethical issues, and health disparities in access to SUD treatment. Last, offering brief trainings in addiction treatment can increase access to care for patients and improve confidence and knowledge for providers who are either in programs without addiction faculty or are located in areas without specialty addiction clinics. Throughout this commentary we provide additional discussion points with the goal of pushing the field forward to advance addiction training for health service psychologists.