Support for alcoholics in withdrawal can go through smartphones. This is what an American study published in JAMA Psychiatry reveals.
The road to recovery is long and winding for alcoholics. After treatment is a very difficult phase. Support groups, psychiatrists, drug solutions can be ways of not plunging back. However, relapses after alcohol withdrawal are frequent. Researchers investigated whether a smartphone app to help alcoholics could reduce the risk of relapses.
A very intrusive application
Specialists at the University of Wisconsin have created an application called A-Chess. Its purpose is to try to dissuade alcoholics from drinking or taking risks by hanging out around bars or pubs.
Users receive messages of encouragement on their smartphones every day so as not to fall for it. Every week, they answer a questionnaire to help their counselor assess the patient’s difficulty in resisting temptation.
Beyond these classic elements, this App goes much further. At the start of treatment, patients should enter the location of their favorite bars. The goal is to allow the application to dissuade them from approaching these bars with an alert message to patients on the proximity of a risk area.
A panic button allows patients to distract themselves in case the temptation is too strong. And if the application notices that the patient stays too long near a bar, it sends him a video of an alcoholic recounting his misery in the face of the disease or a video of one of his children begging him not to drink .
The methods are very intrusive but “necessary for alcoholics, who need this kind of intervention to fight against alcoholism”, recognizes Professor Gustafson.
Help in the face of temptation
To assess its effectiveness on patients, the teams of Prof. David Gustafson, author of the study, observed 349 patients for a year. 179 followed one year of classic post-weaning treatment and 170 one year of treatment as well as a smartphone with the application. The idea was to assess the number of days at risk per week. A risky day for an alcoholic is when he drinks more than four drinks for men and three drinks for women in less than two hours. Each patient had to give each month the number of days on which he had endangered his recovery.
The difference is obvious. On average, alcoholics using the app were at risk 1.39 days per week compared to 2.75 days per week for patients without the app.
The researchers were able to see if the app also helped abstain from drinking. Of the 170 patients with the application, 52% managed not to drink a drop for the duration of the study compared to 40% for patients receiving the traditional treatment.
Smartphones in support of medical treatment
For now, the A-Chess application is not for everyone. “To join the study, mutuals must pay $ 10,000 per patient” indicates the author of the study. The price should drop quickly. A company has reportedly been hired to create an application similar to A-Chess, accessible to the general public.
For Professor Gustafsoon, the results of this first trial should open up new opportunities to treat other types of diseases or addictions. “This type of treatment will make it possible to revolutionize not only the treatment of addiction, but the entire field of public health. The integration of smartphones in medicine is only at its beginning but its development should explode in the coming years.
.