**Assessment & Treatment of Addictions New Tools for Old Problems**

Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in *Journal of Clinical Medicine* Antoni Gual, Pablo Barrio and Laia Miquel Edited by

www.mdpi.com/journal/jcm

### **& Treatment of New Tools for Old Assessment Addictions: Problems**

#### **& Treatment of New Tools for Old Assessment Addictions: Problems**

Editors

**Antoni Gual Pablo Barrio Laia Miquel**

MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade • Manchester • Tokyo • Cluj • Tianjin

*Editors* Antoni Gual Hospital Cl´ınic Spain

Pablo Barrio Hospital Cl´ınic Spain

Laia Miquel Hospital Cl´ınic Spain

*Editorial Office* MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland

This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal *Journal of Clinical Medicine* (ISSN 2077-0383) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jcm/ special issues/Assessment Treatment Addictions).

For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below:

LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. *Journal Name* **Year**, *Volume Number*, Page Range.

**ISBN 978-3-03943-885-3 (Hbk) ISBN 978-3-03943-886-0 (PDF)**

c 2020 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications.

The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.

## **Contents**


#### **Zisis Bimpisidis and Asa Wall ´ ˚ en-Mackenzie**


## **About the Editors**

**Antoni Gual** is a psychiatrist, Head of the Addictions Unit at the Neurosciences Institute, Clinic Hospital, University of Barcelona, Spain; and also acts as Alcohol Consultant at the Health Department of Catalonia. He has coordinated several EU funded projects in the field of addictions and has also been PI of several pharmacological clinical trials. He has published more than 150 articles in peer reviewed journals and edited several books. He is Vicepresident of the International Network on Brief Interventions for Alcohol Problems (INEBRIA), past-President of the European Federation of Addiction Scientific Societies (EUFAS) and past-President of the Spanish Scientific Society for the Study of Alcohol and Alcoholism.

**Pablo Barrio** is a Psychiatrist in the Addiction Unit at Hospital Cl´ınic of Barcelona, Spain and an IDIBAPS researcher. He completed her Ph.D in 2017 at the University of Barcelona, focused on alcohol biomarkers and its clinical implications, which is currently one of his focus of research. He is also interested on the effects of drug use on mental health and psychiatric comorbidities. He is a member of the Spanish Network on Addictive Disorders (RTA)

**Laia Miquel** is a Psychiatrist in the Addiction Unit at Hospital Cl´ınic of Barcelona, Spain and an IDIBAPS researcher. She completed her Ph.D in 2018 at the University of Barcelona. Her current work focuses on epidemiological, clinical and treatment aspects of alcohol cannabis and other substance of use. As a clinician actually involved in neuroscience research, her ultimate goal is to find novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools integrating biological and clinical measures to reduce the suffering of patients with cannabis, cocaine and alcohol use disorders. More recently, is working on psychological trauma in individuals suffering from addictive disorders. She is a member of the Spanish Network on Addictive Disorders (RTA) and the Catalan Research Workgroup on Women's Mental Health in the Catalan Society of Psichiatry and Mental Health. She is also a board member of the society Socidrogalcohol in Catalonia.

## *Editorial* **Comments from the Editors on the Special Issue "Assessment and Treatment of Addictions: New Tools for Old Problems"**

**Pablo Barrio 1,2, Laia Miquel 1,2 and Antoni Gual 1,2,\***


Received: 15 October 2019; Accepted: 16 October 2019; Published: 17 October 2019

**Abstract:** New conceptual and technological solutions have been proposed to solve addictive disorders and will be presented in the future. In this Special Issue, we present some of the new assessment tools and treatment options for internet addiction, alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, and gambling disorders.

**Keywords:** addiction; craving; treatment; assessment instruments; digital health

Addiction represents an enormous challenge to society. Worldwide, it has been estimated that alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs were responsible for more than 10 million deaths [1], with a higher impact in developed countries where substance use disorders have been identified as responsible for life expectancy reversals [2]. Societal and medical responses to the problem are far from optimal, but the appearance of new technologies offers room for improvement, with lots of new initiatives launched and developed. This special issue is intended to describe and discuss how these new tools are helping to improve the assessment and treatment of such old problems (addictive disorders), covering a wide diversity of novelties that are being applied in the field.

Digital health entails the possibility to overcome existent problems around addictive disorders like stigmatization, addiction identification, treatment access, adherence and treatment efficacy by facilitating the improvement in knowledge, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of addictive disorders. Assessment is one of the areas where new solutions have probably reached furthest. Think, for example, about transdermal sensors and ecological momentary assessment: a clear example of how new technologies can reach the core of a patient's drinking pattern. In this special issue, Barrio et al. investigate patients' attitudes towards transdermal sensors in real clinical settings. Digital technologies might be useful to assess brain damage, and they bring us closer to understanding the mechanism(s) underlying addiction. Herreros et al. present a visuomotor rotation task which might be the first step towards developing a useful tool for the detection of cerebellum dysfunction by assessing alterations in implicit learning among chronic cannabis users. New technologies have opened up the possibility of not only assessing patients "right here right now" but also of creating new realities, or should we better say virtual realities? Ghi¸tă et al. show us that virtual reality can enhance the assessment of alcohol-induced craving and anxiety. Technological advances in neuroimaging and genetics have allowed deepening in the understanding of some learning processes involved in substance use disorders. Garbusow et al. provide knowledge on how important processes, such as instrumental responses to relevant stimuli, are influenced by drinking patterns. In this same line, Heinz et al. conduct a review that starts with how Pavlovian and instrumental learning mechanisms interact in drug addiction and finishes with how these learning mechanisms and their respective neurobiological correlates can contribute to losing versus regaining control over drug intake.

Paradoxically enough, new technologies do also have their own risks. Take, for example, internet gaming disorder. Ryu et al. present the development of a new assessment instrument for internet addiction, the Diagnostic Interview for Internet Addiction. And keeping in mind that new psychometric instruments are also new solutions to old problems, Chen et al. investigate an interesting phenomenon in addiction: the intensity of memory addiction. They present us the development of the Addiction Memory Intensity Scale.

In the treatment area, this special issue offers an interesting combination of modalities: newly designed pharmaceutical compounds (nalmefene), naturally occurring psychoactive substances (cannabidiol), and non-pharmacological, biological therapies (rTMS). Barrio et al. report the main effectiveness analysis of a phase-IV study conducted among alcohol dependent outpatients taking nalmefene, the only approved medication for alcohol reduction aims. The use of rTMS is presented by Cardullo et al. in a sample of cocaine and gambling patients. The stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex yields promising results. Finally, Batalla et al. review the potential use of cannabidiol in addictive and comorbid psychotic disorders, pointing to a prominent role in the treatment of cannabis addiction.

Scientific advances and new technologies are providing new tools that let us expand our knowledge, and improve diagnosis and treatment of addictive behaviors, presenting us with opportunity for success and giving people back their health.

**Conflicts of Interest:** Laia Miquel has received honoraria and travel grants from Lundbeck and Neuraxpharm. Antoni Gual has received honoraria and travel grants from Lundbeck, Janssen, D&A Pharma and Servier. Pablo Barrio has received honoraria from Lundbeck.

#### **References**


© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
