Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for HIV+ Hazardous Drinkers

Alcohol use has a substantial impact on HIV care. Sixty-seven percent of people with HIV (PWH) report using alcohol in the previous year, 27-40% report drinking at unhealthy levels and ~30% meet criteria for alcohol use disorder (AUD). PWH who are unhealthy drinkers, compared to those who abstain or drink relatively less, experience a significant increase in risk for: mortality, lack of viral suppression, less antiretroviral therapy (ART) utilization and sub-optimal adherence to ART. Unhealthy alcohol consumption has been found to affect nearly every stage of the HIV care continuum, making it a critical factor in HIV treatment.

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of alcohol interventions for PWH have had limited success, likely due to lack of attention to co-morbid mental health problems. There have been several reviews of this literature, the most recent of which identified 9 non-overlapping behavioral trials developed specifically to target alcohol use and conducted in the U.S. with adult samples of PWH. Only four of these nine trials resulted in significant effects on alcohol-related outcomes and only two trials had effects on alcohol-related outcomes that were significantly different from the control group at 12-month follow-up. One hypothesized reason for this limited success is an increasingly recognized comorbidity of co-occurring unhealthy alcohol use and other mental health-related problems among PWH. Indeed, up to 63% of PWH meet criteria for both a substance use disorder and another psychiatric disorder-necessitating a shift in the literature towards trans-diagnostic approaches that target core psychological processes that underlie multiple mental health and substance-related problems[. One trans-diagnostic mechanism that is particularly relevant to alcohol and other substance use is experiential avoidance (EA)- i.e., repeated, and maladaptive, use of substances and/or other behaviors to escape or avoid unwanted thoughts, feelings, and/or urges.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a promising trans-diagnostic intervention for PWH.

ACT is a trans-diagnostic treatment that targets experiential avoidance as an underlying factor common to mental and behavioral health problems. Mindfulness skills and values-guided behavioral action plans are used to decrease experiential avoidance and impact a broad array of psychological symptoms via improved psychological acceptance. A recent review of 20 meta-analyses, based on 133 studies, found ACT to be efficacious across multiple psychological and behavioral health-related outcomes including: depression, anxiety, chronic pain, stress, and trans-diagnostic combinations of conditions. Additionally, three meta- analyses have found ACT to be efficacious for smoking and other drug use and there is an emerging literature suggesting ACT is a promising approach for alcohol use. There have not, however, been any full- scale RCTs of ACT for alcohol use among any population, including PWH. Given ACT's potential to improve multiple psychological and alcohol-related problems simultaneously, it holds great promise as an intervention for PWH who are unhealthy drinkers. The investigators recently adapted a telephone-delivered ACT intervention originally developed for smoking cessation, into an intervention for PWH who drink at unhealthy levels (NIH/NIAAA; R34AA026246). With a multidisciplinary team, and with two rounds of input from PWH, the investigators developed a six- session, telephone-delivered ACT intervention for alcohol use and subsequently conducted a pilot feasibility/acceptability RCT. The investigators found high acceptability of the adapted ACT intervention, and evidence of feasibility for conducting a full-scale, remote, RCT.

The overall objective of this application is therefore to determine the relative efficacy of ACT, compared to a standard Brief Alcohol Intervention (BI), for reducing alcohol use and comorbid symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress among adult PWH who are unhealthy drinkers. The application's specific aims are to:

Aim 1: Determine the relative efficacy of ACT, compared to BI, for reducing alcohol use among PWH.

To achieve this aim, the investigators will: conduct a fully remote, relative efficacy RCT. The investigators will randomly assign 300 PWH who are unhealthy drinkers to either the ACT intervention the investigators developed (n = 150), or a BI intervention (n = 150) previously shown to reduce alcohol use among PWH. The investigators will assess alcohol-related outcomes-via self-report and an objective biomarker (phosphatidylethanol) - at baseline, post-treatment (7 weeks post-baseline), and again 3-, 6-, and 12-months post-randomization. The investigators hypothesize that: the two treatments will have significant, and statistically equivalent, effects on alcohol use at post-treatment and 3-months (H1) and, consistent with a sleeper effect for ACT, the ACT condition will have superior alcohol outcomes at 6- and 12-months post- randomization (H2).

Aim 2: Determine if ACT has an effect on trans-diagnostic processes that in turn affect alcohol use and other psychological and functional outcomes. To achieve this aim, the investigators will: measure EA and determine if it mediates treatment effects for alcohol use and other psychological and functional outcomes. The investigators hypothesize that: ACT will have superior outcomes on stress, anxiety, depression, and functional outcomes at all follow-up timepoints (H3) and that EA will be a significant mediator of all treatment effects, including alcohol use (H4).