Psychophysiological and Psychosocial Profile of Patients Attending Drug Addiction Centers.

Drug treatment centres provide the highest level of rehab services for patients diagnosed with drug addictions. Most inpatient drug rehab programs focus on medical detox and mental health interventions. However, how to optimize the later remains a challenge. The aim of this study was to examine the psychophysiological and psychosocial profile of patients attending drug addiction centres in comparation with the general population. A total of 105 inpatient drug rehab patients and 50 participants from the general population were compared based on standardized psychophysiological and psychosocial measures. Results of this study suggest that patients attending drug addiction centers differ from general population in several different psychophysiological and psychosocial factors. Patients reported significantly lower levels of physical activity and increased sympathetic responsiveness, and significantly higher levels in loneliness, psychologically inflexibility and neuroticism. The results of this study highlight the importance of address healthy lifestyle behaviors such as sport practice and psychological variables such as loneliness, psychological (in)flexibility and neuroticism to improve current programs aim to prevent or reduce problematic drug consumptions.

Efficacy of the Therapeutic Game "Trisquel" in the Treatment of Patients With Substance-Related Disorders Randomized Clinical Study.

Substance-related disorders (SRD) have been consistently associated with alterations both in cognitive and executive functions, which affect to patients' quality of life. The main objective of this work was to test the beneficial cognitive effects on patients with SRD after the implementation of "Trisquel," an intervention program in board game format. To check the effectiveness of Trisquel program, a group of people diagnosed with SRD was randomly assigned either to the experimental group or to the control group. The experimental group performed Trisquel structured sessions twice a week during 3 months, while the control group performed routinely conventional therapeutic activities with the same frequency and duration. Neuropsychological tests were done to both groups before and after the intervention. After the 3 months of intervention the experimental group showed the following statistically significant improvements for WAIS-III subtests: number key, symbol search, arithmetic, direct digits, inverse digits, total digits, letters-numbers in the processing speed index and in the working memory index. Regarding STROOP tests, statistically significant progress was observed in the phonetic fluency letter P, phonetic fluency letter M, phonetic fluency letter R subtests, word-reading and word-color subtests. The control group only obtained improvements for WAIS-III subtests of arithmetic, letters-numbers and in the working memory index. The results of this study confirm that "Trisquel" is an effective intervention program for people diagnosed with SRD, getting improvements in processing speed (psychomotor and reading), attentional subprocesses (focused and sustained) and executive functions (updating and inhibition).

[Evolution of treatment and consumption in persons with cocaine dependence, at 12-months, in respect of the associated psychopathology and daily functioning]. / Evolución del tratamiento y consumo en personas con dependencia de la cocaína, a los doce meses, en función de la psicopatología asociada y el funcionamiento cotidiano.

The aim of the present study is to analyse the evolution, at 12-months, of patients with cocaine dependence undergoing treatment in drug abuse centres. We examined the relationship between sociodemographic variables, drug use characteristics, and psychopathological characteristics with maintenance of drug abstinence and the evolution of daily functioning evaluated by the therapist at 3-, 6- and 12-months. The most outstanding results are that subjects with a dependent personality pattern, according to the MCMI-II, are more likely to maintain cocaine abstinence during the 12-months following the preliminary assessment. Moreover, the variables more related with a worse daily functioning at 12-months are injected or smoked cocaine use, previous treatments for drug use and having used heroin on some occasion. Therefore, drug related aspects and not psychopathological characteristics are more important when analysing the 12-months evolution in these subjects.