Internet-delivered Therapy for Alcohol Misuse: Investigating Patient Preference for Self-guided or Guided Treatment

Summary

Internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT) shows promise as a method of treating alcohol misuse. In this form of treatment, patients complete online lessons over several weeks that assist patients in developing skills to address alcohol misuse. ICBT can be offered to patients in a self-guided format or with guidance. Self-guided ICBT allows users to complete lessons by themselves without any contact with a guide. Guided ICBT involves having support from a guide in the form of emails, online messages and/or brief telephone calls. In some studies, guided-ICBT has shown greater reductions in alcohol consumption than self-guided ICBT. To date, there has been limited research on patient preferences for these varying levels of support when ICBT is offered as part of routine health care. This represents an important research direction as there is some past research showing that patients' treatment preferences can affect study enrollment, attrition, adherence, satisfaction, and outcomes.

This study will investigate patient preferences for self-guided ICBT versus guided-ICBT and compare enrollment, attrition, adherence, and outcomes of the two approaches when patients select their treatment preferences. The study will also explore the extent to which preferences are related to patient background variables (e.g., duration, severity of problems, treatment goals in terms of patients wanting to cut-down on alcohol use versus to abstain from alcohol use). Furthermore, this study seeks to identify how ratings of effort and helpfulness throughout treatment vary depending on whether patients select self-guided versus guided ICBT. This study represents a pragmatic observational trial conducted in routine care and aims to increase understanding of how to implement ICBT within routine care.

Conditions

• Alcohol Use Disorder

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Guidance

Guidance from a health educator through regular weekly online messages. Participants may also be contacted through emails and phone calls. The team of guides consists of registered social workers, psychologists, and graduate students, with experience delivering ICBT.

BEHAVIORAL

ICBT for alcohol misuse

The 8-week internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (ICBT) course for alcohol misuse. The course consists of 8 lessons distributed across 8 weeks.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Saskatchewan Centre for Patient-Oriented Research

  collaborator OTHER

• Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation

  collaborator OTHER

• Ministry of Health, Saskatchewan

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Regina

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Heather Hadjistavropoulos, PhD · University of Regina

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-11-01

Primary Completion

2022-08-19

Completion

2022-08-19

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations