John Roll, PhD
Washington Institute for Mental Health Research & Training
- Telephone: 509.358.7612
- E-mail: johnroll@wsu.edu
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- News: Roll awarded more than $4 million to develop programs for treatment of substance abuse and mental illness in Washington’s rural areas.
Evidence-based Answers for Substance Abuse
John Roll, director of the Washington Institute for Mental
Health Research and Training, explains that his research
addresses both basic and applied questions about drug use. On the
basic science side, Roll examines behavioral pharmacology: how
drugs, organisms, and environment interact to influence the use of
drugs and the development of dependence.
On the applied side, Roll examines the effectiveness of behavioral
therapies that get drug users to replace drug use with other
behaviors that are more rewarding, also known as contingency
management. He has studied behavioral treatments for smoking in
teens and for the use of drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine,
including an evaluation of behavioral therapy in combination with
drug court procedures.
While his work has focused on treatment, Roll said his goal is to
move more toward the prevention side. He takes a big-picture
approach to drug use, believing that it must be tackled through a
combination of treatment, prevention, and law enforcement—as
well as an understanding of the challenges faced by those
particularly at risk.
Roll has acted as a principal investigator or co-/sub- investigator
on numerous grants totaling several million dollars, most of them
from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (a unit of the National
Institutes of Health).
