A smartphone application to support recovery from alcoholism: A randomized controlled trial

By D. Gustafson, F. McTavish, Ming-Yuan Chih, A. Atwood, Roberta A. Johnson, Michael G. Boyle, Michael Levy, H. Driscoll, Steven M. Chisholm, Lisa Dillenburg and 2 more. JAMA psychiatry, 2014

655 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Importance: Patients leaving treatment for alcohol-use disorders (AUDs) are not typically offered evidence-based continuing care, although research suggests that continuing care is associated with better outcomes. A smartphone-based application could provide effective continuing care. Objective: To determine whether patients leaving residential treatment for AUDs with a smartphone application to support recovery have fewer risky drinking days than control-group patients. Design: An un-blinded randomized controlled trial. Patients were randomized to treatment as usual or treatment as usual plus a smartphone with A-CHESS, an application designed to improve continuing care for AUDs. “A-CHESS” stands for Addiction – Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System. Setting: Three residential programs operated by one treatment organization in the Midwestern US and 2 residential programs operated by one organization in the Northeastern US. Participants: 349 patients who met the criteria for DSM-IV alcohol dependence when they entered residential treatment. 179 were randomized to the control group and 170 to the treatment group. Intervention: Treatment as usual varied across programs; none offered patients coordinated continuing care after discharge. A-CHESS provides monitoring, information, communication, and support services to patients, including ways for patients and counselors to stay in contact. The intervention lasted 8 months and the follow-up period lasted 4 months. Main Outcome Measure: Risky drinking days—the number of days during which a patient’s drinking in a 2-hour period exceeded, for men, 4 standard drinks and for women, 3 standard drinks. Patients were asked to report their risky drinking days in the previous 30 days on surveys taken 4, 8, and 12 months after discharge from residential treatment. Results: For the 8 months of the intervention and 4 months of follow-up, patients in the A-CHESS group reported significantly fewer risky drinking days than patients in the control group (M = 1.39 vs. 2.75, respectively; P = .003; 95% CI [.46, 2.27]). Conclusions and Relevance: The findings suggest that a multi-featured smartphone application may have significant benefit to patients in continuing care for AUDs. Trial registration: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01003119

Subfields: Epidemiology, General Health Professions, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de54f8c9ced006ca5e986e3dfc871b4effb0fed8

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Citations in the corpus

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Can Mobile Phone Apps Influence People’s Health Behavior Change? An Evidence Review (2016, methodology): “A computer random number generator was used in 2 studies [9,27].”
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