Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders co-occur at rates that far exceed chance. And while cannabis is commonly authorized and used to manage PTSD symptoms, we also know that PTSD and cannabis use disorder are frequently comorbid. Dr. Stewart will begin with a review of learning theories proposed to account for this comorbidity including classically conditioned substance craving to trauma cues. She will present her research using various forms of the trauma cue reactivity paradigm to identify cognitive, affective, and neural mechanisms contributing to this comorbidity and will highlight studies conducted by her undergraduate honours, graduate, and postdoctoral trainees. She will also address the issue of the ethics of using the trauma cue reactivity paradigm, and will review some convincing evidence from people with lived and living experience that argues for this paradigm being ethical for use in research. Dr. Stewart will outline theoretical and clinical implications of the work which recently inspired a case series testing written exposure therapy (WET) as a transdiagnostic intervention. She and her colleagues showed the WET intervention was associated with decreases not only in PTSD symptoms, but also in trauma cue-elicited distress and cannabis craving. Dr. Stewart will conclude with a discussion of future directions in this novel line of research.
Dr. Sherry H. Stewart is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Addictions and Mental Health, and Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology & Neuroscience at Dalhousie University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences who is well-known for her research on psychological factors contributing to substance misuse, problem gambling, and emotional disorder-addictive disorder comorbidity. Dr. Stewart is Graduate Program Coordinator of the MSc and PhD programs in Psychiatry Research and twice served as the Director of Clinical Training for the PhD program in Clinical Psychology at Dalhousie. She leads the Atlantic Node of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funded Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Matters (CRISM)-a national addiction interventions research network. She has received funding from a variety of research agencies including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the CIHR, and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. A fellow of the CPA, Dr. Stewart was honored in 2023 with the D.O. Hebb Award for distinguished contributions to psychology as a science. She is an inspiring mentor to students and trainees from undergraduate to post-doctoral, and has won three supervision awards, including from the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies.
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