Narrative Medicine and Addiction: Story, Meaning, and Recovery

About this Research Topic

Background

Addiction is not only a neurobiological or behavioral condition, but also a deeply human experience shaped by story, meaning, and identity. Narrative Medicine—an interdisciplinary field that integrates the study of stories and storytelling into clinical practice—offers powerful frameworks for understanding and addressing substance use disorders and behavioral addictions. Through close attention to narrative identity, language, and empathy, Narrative Medicine has been shown to enhance clinician understanding, improve patient outcomes, and deepen human connection in healthcare.

This Research Topic invites submissions that explore how narrative approaches illuminate the lived experience of addiction and recovery, shape public and clinical understanding, and inform treatment and policy. We seek contributions that bridge disciplines—medicine, psychology, public health, neuroscience, literature, theology, and the arts—to expand how we understand and respond to addiction in individuals and communities.

The goal of this Research Topic is to decrease stigma, cultivate empathy, enhance patient care and outcomes, and expand addiction education for healthcare clinicians, government leaders and policymakers, religious leaders, as well as the general public. By exploring how stories shape identity, empathy, and recovery, this collection aims to advance a more integrative and meaning-centered approach to addiction and public health.

Suitable themes for manuscripts include, but are not limited to:

• Narrative Identity and meaning reconstruction in Addiction Recovery

• Trauma and Narrative Repair in Addiction Recovery

• The role of narrative humility in clinician–patient relationships in addiction care

• Addiction and the arts: insights from literature, film, art, and music

• Narrative coherence and relapse: nonlinear recovery stories

• Integrating narrative meaning-making with neurobiological models of addiction

• Measuring the impact of narrative interventions in addiction treatment

• Narrative-based education and training in addiction medicine and psychiatry

• Story, empathy, and the therapeutic alliance in substance use treatment

• Culturally embedded addiction narratives and their clinical implications

• Narrative medicine and moral injury among addiction clinicians

• Storytelling and meaning reconstruction in behavioral addictions

• Narrative framing of addiction in media, culture, and policy

• Mixed-methods and qualitative approaches to studying narrative change in recovery outcomes

• Bridging narrative and data: integrating patient stories with measurement-based care

• The role of primal world beliefs as narrative identity in addiction recovery

• The role of religious narratives and/or narrative theology in destigmatization and addiction recovery



We especially encourage interdisciplinary and cross-sector work that connects Narrative Medicine Practice, Public Health and Policy, the Arts, and Religion and Theology, as well as studies that incorporate qualitative, mixed-methods, or innovative narrative methodologies.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Narrative Medicine, Substance Use Disorders Treatment and Recovery, Addiction

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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