Cognitive improvement via mhealth for patients recovering from substance use disorder

Heroin addiction has a negative impact on cognitive functions, which may also contribute to poorer treatment outcomes in drug addition. Traditional cognitive rehabilitation approaches suffer from limited motivational appeal and are relatively cumbersome to carry out. Thus, we report a study testing the efficacy of an alternative mHealth approach using tablets and serious games to stimulate cognitive functions in recovering addicts. This approach was tested in a sample 14 male heroin addicts undergoing a rehabilitation program for heroin addiction as inpatients at a local NGO. The exercises for cognitive training were based on serious games running on tablets. The results showed improvements in cognitive functioning between baseline and follow-up assessments in frontal lobe functions, verbal memory and sustained attention, as well as in some aspects of cognitive flexibility, decision-making and depression. Patients in cognitive training had a higher proportion of positive outcomes related to indicators of verbal memory cognitive flexibility than patients not in training. Overall results are promising but still require randomized control trials to determine the efficiency of this approach as an alternative to cognitive rehabilitation programs in heroin addicts.