Affective Management Training for Cannabis Misuse

Emerging evidence suggests that it is not the negative affect per se but underlying maladaptive cognitive, behavioral, and emotional responses to it that put an individual at risk of pathological substance use. Maladaptive reactivity to negative affect may account for the association between substance-use and emotional disorders and may contribute to poor treatment outcomes for Substance Use Disorder. Thus, teaching adolescents and young adults (herein referred to as \"adolescents\") skills to manage negative affect may improve therapeutic outcomes of treatment for substance use disorder. Cannabis-use disorder (CUD) among adolescents is a prevalent and growing public health concern. Maladaptive reactivity to negative affect contributes to the maintenance of CUD and accounts for the associations between symptoms of emotional disorders and cannabis use. Still, maladaptive reactivity to negative affect has not yet been targeted in an intervention for CUD. Thus, the overarching aim of this proposal is to develop and pilot test a treatment for CUD that emphasizes the reduction of maladaptive responding to negative affect in adolescents. Participants will be placed in either a standard cognitive behavioral therapy for CUD, or the proposed affective management therapy. The investigators hypothesize that affective management training will yield greater reductions in the participants\' use of cannabis, as well as greater improvements to the participants\' negative thoughts and emotions, compared to the standard cognitive behavioral therapy.