Psychosocial interventions for cannabis use disorder

Area of Science:

• Addiction Medicine
• Psychiatry
• Public Health

Background:

• Cannabis use disorder (CUD) is a prevalent substance use disorder, yet few individuals seek professional help.
• There is a growing international demand for effective CUD treatments and updated systematic reviews to inform public policy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review the efficacy of psychosocial interventions for adults with CUD.
• To compare these interventions against inactive controls or alternative treatments in outpatient or community settings.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published before July 2015.
• Searched multiple databases including CENTRAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL.
• Included 23 RCTs with 4045 participants, focusing on psychosocial interventions without pharmacological components.

Main Results:

• Moderate-quality evidence shows psychosocial interventions improve treatment completion rates and reduce cannabis use frequency.
• Low-quality evidence suggests interventions increase abstinence rates and decrease dependence symptoms and cannabis-related problems.
• Intensive interventions (over 4 sessions, >1 month) showed better short-term outcomes, particularly combinations of motivational enhancement therapy (MET) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with voucher-based incentives.

Conclusions:

• Psychosocial interventions, especially intensive MET and CBT combinations with incentives, offer a durable short-term reduction in cannabis use and dependence severity.
• Abstinence rates were low but comparable to other substance use disorder treatments.
• Further research is needed to address heterogeneity and generalizability due to limited study locations and homogeneous samples.