OPEN Research Support
head

Associate professor, clinical psychologist
Angelina Isabella Mellentin
Department of Clinical Research


Project management
Project status    Open
 
Data collection dates
Start 01.09.2022  
End 01.05.2025  
 



A randomized controlled trial of attentional control training for treating alcohol use disorder

Short summary

The current randomized controlled trial will examine whether the Alcohol Attentional Control Training Program (aACTP) delivered through a smartphone application can be used to enhance the current primary evidence-based treatments for patients with AUD.


Rationale

There is consistent evidence that community and clinical samples of individuals with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) have attentional biases toward alcohol cues. The alcohol attentional control training program (AACTP) has shown promise for retraining these biases

decreasing alcohol consumption in community samples of excessive drinkers. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of ACTP in clinical AUD samples. The main aim of the present study is to investigate whether primary pharmacological and psychological, evidence-based alcohol treatment can be enhanced by the addition of a gamified aACTP smartphone application for patients with an AUD


Description of the cohort

A total of 318 patients will be needed for the study, which will be conducted as a parallel randomized controlled study in various outpatient alcohol treatment clinics in Denmark. The study will be conducted as a parallel randomized controlled study in various outpatient alcohol treatment clinics in Denmark. To be eligible to participate, patients must fulfill the following criteria. They must (1) sign written informed consent, (2) be between 18 and 65 years old (because the intervention is web-based), (3) be fluent in Danish, (4) have completed detoxification (if deemed appropriate), (5) have been admitted to primary treatment within the past eight weeks, (6) not be color-blind, (7) not have a severe psychiatric or neurological illness (e.g., a psychotic disorder, intellectual disability, dementia) or terminal physical illness.


Data and biological material

Following data will be collected: Sociodemographic variables, alcohol consumption, premorbid intelligence, diagnoses, comorbid disorder, cognitive performance, attentional bias, affective states, and hair samples.