State of the Art in Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: An Emerging Treatment for Substance Misuse

Harm reduction psychotherapy is an exciting and emerging treatment for a broad spectrum of substance use problems. This article introduces an issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session devoted to the state of the art of harm reduction psychotherapy. We describe the harm reduction paradigm, the context for and history of the development of harm reduction psychotherapy, and its clinical principles. We then outline and frame the contributions to the issue. Our goal is that this issue will encourage psychotherapists to employ more harm reduction principles in practice and will provide many evidence-based methods to do so. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol: In Session 66:117-122, 2010.