Addiction prevention based on character strengths: A narrative review

BACKGROUND: As a chronic psychological and social disorder, addiction has caused concern in many societies. Many researches are needed to explain the factors affecting addiction to provide better knowledge and offer treatment strategies for its prevention. Character strengths, as one of the new theories related to positive psychology, can play a vital role in explaining addiction; therefore, the present study is aimed to investigate addiction prevention based on the character strengths. METHODS: This narrative review study used the keywords of “character strengths”, “addiction”, “drug use”, “drug abuse”, and “addiction tendency”, which were used in Persian and English databases. RESULTS: Character strengths as positive human characteristics reduced the vulnerability of people to addiction by improving individual and interpersonal strengths in different areas of life. CONCLUSION: The results of the present study have important implications for rehabilitators and addiction counselors in addiction prevention and empowerment of recovered addicts; therefore, paying attention to character strengths in mental and social health programs based on different levels of prevention could be of a great effectiveness.