Campbell/Spillane Substance Use Research - Interview with Charles O'Brien

Abstract

Charles P. O'Brien, MD, PhD, is a research scientist, medical educator and a leading expert in the science and treatment of addiction. He is board certified in neurology, psychiatry and addiction psychiatry. He is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. While serving as chief of psychiatry at the Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center in Philadelphia. In 1971 Dr. O'Brien founded and became director of a clinical research program consisting of a group of VA and University of Pennsylvania scientists. From 1971 until 2013, he served as director of this research center, called the Center for Studies of Addiction at the University of Pennsylvania. He and the center's other researchers made many discoveries about the treatment of addictive disorders, and published their research findings in more than 500 research papers, all authored or co-authored by O'Brien, and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Dr. O'Brien has chaired or served as a member of many Institute of Medicine committees dealing with science and drug abuse policy matters and from 2007 to 2013, served as chairperson of the Substance Use Disorders Committee of the American Psychiatric Association. The purpose of this committee was to revise the primary classification system of the DSM-5, that psychiatrists use in diagnosing mental illnesses, including addiction disorders. There was no validated measure of addiction in the 1970s, so Dr. O'Brien began work, together with A. Thomas McLellan, PhD, to develop the "Addiction Severity Index", a tool that was later translated into over 30 languages and which by 2012 was being used throughout the world to determine the extent of patients' problems and tailor appropriate treatment approaches. Naltrexone, an opioid receptor antagonist, was already in use by the early 1980s as a medication for treating addiction to heroin and other opioids, but not alcohol addiction. Based on animal studies, O'Brien in the 1980s theorized that alcohol produced pleasure by releasing endorphins – the brain's naturally occurring opioids. Dr. O'Brien and his colleagues discovered a new treatment for alcoholism using naltrexone. In 1995, the FDA approved naltrexone for the treatment of alcohol dependence, ushering in a new era of alcoholism treatment which, prior to this time, had been limited mainly to psychotherapy and psychosocial interventions such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P._O%27Brien Accessed 16 Mar 2023. https://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g275/p8578 Accessed 16 Mar 2023.