Addiction spectrum disorder: a conceptual framework for comprehensive understanding of addictive disorders

Front Psychol. 2026 Feb 27;17:1753662. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1753662. eCollection 2026.

ABSTRACT

The term addiction or addictive disorder refers to a psychiatric condition that is characterized impulsive and compulsive seeking targets or action executions despite negative consequences are expected to occur. However, it has been used to lump widely heterogeneous conditions, such as substance use disorders, behavioral addictions, and food addiction, together, which has been causing a serious problem in understanding and defining the addictive disorder. Here we deliberate a framework toward comprehensive understanding of addictive disorders that overcome the heterogeneities of substance use disorders, behavioral addictions, and a food addiction, by considering that addictive disorders could form a spectrum of disorders, consisting of three imperative components, specifically negative reinforcements in relation to compulsive seeking, cue-induced responses in relation to associative learning, and a food addiction as an intermediate phenotype between substance use disorders and behavioral addictions.

PMID:41835856 | PMC:PMC12982418 | DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1753662