Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Nov 10, 2017
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 11, 2017 - Nov 25, 2017
Date Accepted: Jan 6, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Attention Bias in Individuals with Addictive Disorders: Systematic Review Protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
Globally, substance disorders, particularly that of opiate use, cannabis use, and stimulant use disorders, are highly prevalent. Psychological treatments are an integral aspect of intervention, but a proportion of individuals still relapse despite having received such an intervention. Recently, the dual-process theory proposed that the unconscious processes of attention biases are responsible for these relapses. Prior meta-analyses have reported the presence of attention bias in alcohol and tobacco use disorders. More recent research has examined attention bias and its effectiveness in opiate use, cannabis use, and stimulant use disorder. The evidence syntheses to date have not examined whether attention bias is present in these disorders and could be subjected to manipulation. This is important information and would support the introduction of psychological interventions for attention bias for such patients. Such psychological interventions would help individuals maintain their abstinence and minimize the risk of relapse.
Objective:
This paper aims to undertake a systematic review to synthesize the existing evidence for the presence of attention bias in all the disorders mentioned above, and to determine the clinical efficacy of attention bias modification.
Methods:
A systematic review will be conducted. A search will be conducted on the respective databases up till 2017. Selection of the studies will be determined by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis guidelines. Quality assessment of the included studies will be assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. A narrative synthesis will be conducted, with a meta-analysis considered only if there are sufficient studies for statistical analysis.
Results:
The results of the systematic review will be available 12 months after the publication of this protocol.
Conclusions:
This review is important as it will support the introduction of psychological interventions for attention bias for such patients. Such psychological interventions would help individuals maintain their abstinence and minimize the risk of relapse.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.