Cited by 38Substance Abuse Treatment and OutcomesMindfulness and Compassion InterventionsAnxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes

Ultra-brief breath counting (mindfulness) training promotes recovery from stress-induced alcohol-seeking in student drinkers

Open access
Shuai, Ruichong, Bakou, Alexandra Elissavet, Hardy, Lorna, Hogarth, Lee·2020·Addictive Behaviors

Abstract

The therapeutic effect of mindfulness interventions on problematic drinking is thought to be driven by increased resilience to the impact of stress on negative mood and alcohol-seeking behaviour, but this claim needs empirical support. To address this hypothesis, the current study tested whether brief training of one component of mindfulness - breath counting - would reduce drinkers' sensitivity to the effect of noise stress on subjective mood and alcohol-seeking behaviour. Baseline alcohol-seeking was measured by choice to view alcohol versus food thumbnail pictures in 192 student drinkers. Participants then received a 6-minute audio file which either trained breath counting or recited a popular science extract, in separate groups. All participants were then stressed by a loud industrial noise and alcohol-seeking was measured again simultaneously to quantify the change from baseline. Subjective mood was measured after all three stages (baseline, post intervention, post stress test). The breath counting group were instructed to deploy this technique during the stress test. Results showed that the breath counting versus control intervention improved subjective mood relative to baseline, attenuated the worsening of subjective mood produced by stress induction, and accelerated recovery from a stress induced increase in alcohol-seeking behaviour. Exploratory moderation analysis showed that this accelerated recovery from stress induced alcohol-seeking by breath counting was weaker in more alcohol dependent participants. Mindfulness therapies may improve problematic drinking by increasing resilience to stress induced negative mood and alcohol-seeking, as observed in this study. The weaker therapeutic effect of breath counting in more dependent drinkers may reveal limitations to this intervention strategy.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.addbeh.2019.106141

Cites

146 of 146 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Bravo, A. J., Prince, M. A., O’Donnell, M. B., Pearson, M. R., & Henson, M. M. (submitted for publication). Buffering the associations between negative mood states and subjective alcohol craving: A brief mindfulness induction. Addictive Behaviors.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Shuai, R., Bakou, A. E., Hardy, L., & Hogarth, L.
Affiliations
University of Exeter (GB)
Corresponding author
Hogarth, Lee
Venue
Addictive Behaviors
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2020-03
Volume
102
Pages
106141
ISSN
0306-4603 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2980859282
Cited by
38
References
146
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 7
FWCI
3.43
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Addictive Behaviors (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Alcohol Change UK
  • Medical Research Council
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
Keywords
mindfulness, stress, problematic drinking, subjective mood, noise stress, alcoholism, resilience, brief intervention, alcohol cue reactivity
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Affect, Alcohol Drinking, Female, United Kingdom, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Noise, Surveys and Questionnaires, Respiration, Students, Resilience, Psychological, Drug-Seeking Behavior, Mindfulness

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review