CBT Treatment for Internet Gaming Disorder

Sahlgrenska University Hospital

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Internet Gaming Disorder; Gaming Disorder

Treatments: Behavioral: Wait list control; Behavioral: CBT-treatment

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05328596

MSS 2022-IGD RCT

Details and patient eligibility

About

For most people, gaming is perceived as a positive activity. In some cases, however, gaming may turn into an addiction with consequences for the individual health, quality of life and everyday life. Today, there is a lack of evidence-based interventions to treat this condition, called Gaming Disorder (GD). This study will evaluate a new manual for treatment of GD, divided into a number of modules and based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). The study is designed as a randomized controlled trial (RCT) and will be conducted at a clinic specialized in the treatment of gambling and gaming addiction.

Participants included in the study will be randomized to one of to groups. The intervention group will receive twelve weeks of individual CBT-treatment while participants allocated to the control group will be put on a twelve-week wait-list.

The hypothesis is that the manual based CBT treatment will result in a greater reduction in symptoms of criteria for GD.

Full description

The study is designed as a two-armed randomized controlled trial. After inclusion, every participant will be offered an overview of the participant´s psychosocial circumstances. Thereafter, the participants will be randomized to one of the two arms.

The main arm includes individual CBT treatment following a module-based manual. The manual includes nine main modules and three optional modules addressing different dimensions of gaming disorder, for example thoughts, emotions, and procrastination. Between every session the participants are working with home assignments, in order to strengthen helpful behaviours. The participants also report amount of time spent on gaming and other activities every week.

Participants randomized to the control arm also report their time spent on gaming and other activities every week.The wait-list control has the same duration as the CBT-arm. After the control-period, participants in the control arm will be offered the same treatment as participants in the intervention arm.

Enrollment: 160 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 16+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Fulfilling 5 out of 9 criteria for IGD according to DSM V
• ≥ 16 years of age
• Can read and speak Swedish fluidly.

Exclusion criteria

• Somatic or psychiatric disease that is contraindicating or severely complicates the implementation of the intervention (e.g., ongoing psychotic, manic or hypomanic episode or neuropsychiatric condition with severe disability)
• Ongoing increased suicide risk that is considered to make it inappropriate for the patient to participate in the study (based on evaluation at the structured clinical interview)
• have another ongoing psychological treatment with a content similar to that in the current study
• plan to start such treatment during the XX weeks that the study is ongoing or has during the last three weeks started or changed medication for any psychiatric problem.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

160 participants in 2 patient groups

CBT treatment

Experimental group

Description:

The CBT-arm includes treatment according to a manual developed to treat GD. The manual is based on nine main and three optional modules. Each module covers different topics identified as problematic for individuals with GD, for example "thoughts" and "feelings". It is possible to adjust the number of modules, in line with the individual plan for every participant. During the treatment period, the participants report their weekly time spent on gaming, non-gaming screen-time and on other activities.

Treatment:

Behavioral: CBT-treatment

Wait list control

Other group

Description:

Participants randomised to the control-arm is put on a twelve-week wait-list. During this time, the participants will report their weekly time spent on gaming, non-gaming screen-time and on other activities.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Wait list control