Smedslund, Geir og Fang, Lin | Nilsen, Wendy | Wollscheid, Sabine | Steiro, Asbjørn | Larun, Lillebeth
Alcohol abuse and use of recreational drugs among young people are significant public health concerns. These should be addressed by effective interventions that provide assistance and counselling to drug and alcohol users. A computerized brief intervention is any preventive or therapeutic activity delivered through online or offline electronic devices, such as a mobile phone, and administered within an hour or less, even a few minutes, of the substance abuse. Such interventions aim to reduce alcohol abuse or drug abuse in general. This review assesses research on the effectiveness of early, computerized brief interventions on alcohol and cannabis use by young people who abuse either one or both of these substances. The interventions significantly reduce alcohol consumption in the short-term compared to no intervention, but the effect size is small, and there is no significant effect in the long-term. There are also shortcomings in the quality of the evidence. Interventions which provide an assessment of alcohol use with feedback may have a larger effect that those which do not, but again, the evidence is weak. The few studies on cannabis did not show significant effects in the reduction of cannabis consumption. There was no evidence of adverse effects.
216 s., utgitt av The Campbell Collaboration i 2017.