THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COMPUTER-BASED COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY APPROACH FOR THE TREATMENT OF ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDERS OF DRUG ADDICTS

Abstract

Attention is one of the cognitive skills that plays an essential role in human life. Various factors cause damage to cognitive function. One of the causes of impaired cognitive function is drug addiction. Drug use causes a distraction in the attention of addicted people and their attention is drawn to the symptoms related to drugs in the environment (attentional bias). In this paper, by presenting a computer-based cognitive rehabilitation method, the attentional bias of drug addicts is evaluated and treated. 15 patients par­ticipated as a control group and 15 patients addicted to methamphetamine particip­ated as an experimental group. The results showed that before the treatment process, there was a significant difference between the mean reaction time of the experimental group (364.20 ms) and the control group (453.13 ms) in dealing with methamphetamine-related images (p<0.05). But after the treatment process, there was no significant difference between the mean reaction time of the experimental group (444.53 ms) and the control (462 ms). Also, before the treatment process, the reaction time of the control group (381.66 ms) in dealing with miscellaneous images was shorter than that of addicts (416.4 ms). But after the treatment process, there was no significant difference between the reaction time of the experimental group (373.06 ms) and the control (381.33 ms). Therefore, the results show that people addicted to methamphetamine are more sensitive and irritable to images and visual symptoms related to methamphetamine. The drug methamphetamine has improved in dealing with images related to this drug, so the use of this therapeutic approach during the withdrawal period is very important and reduces the likelihood of disease recurrence in this condition.