Key Messages

• Digital health resources for addiction range from mobile applications, web-based screening and brief interventions, and web-based multimedia and multi-module platforms.
• Overall, empirical investigations including adults who identified as female or women generally revealed positive effects. Mobile and web-based platforms demonstrated therapeutic benefits more consistently than brief interventions.
• Empirical evaluations rarely assess gender identity or conduct sex- or gender-based analyses; evidence specifically for females or women is therefore weak.
• Interim resource ratings suggested many resources provide sex or gender specific information, and support empowerment; however, most other principles of gender-informed care are not evident. Most resources upheld several principles of trauma informed care (e.g., strengths-based care); however, others were less represented.

Keywords

• Addiction
• Substance misuse
• Substance use disorder
• Women
• Female
• Trauma
• Abuse
• Digital health
• Web-based treatment
• eHealth

Author(s)

• Nominated Principal Applicant: Lena C. Quilty, PhD, CPsych; Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
• Branka Agic, PhD, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
• Leslie Buckley, MD, FRCPC, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
• Michelle Coombs, PhD, Jean Tweed Centre
• Betty-Lou Kristy, Centre for Innovation in Peer Support
• Jill Shakespeare, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
• Adrienne Spafford, Addictions Mental Health Ontario

For more information, please contact: Lena C. Quilty, lena.quilty@camh.ca

Related Syntheses

• Niikaniganaw (All My Relations) Ii – the COVID-19 Rapid Response: Indigenous Approaches to Synthesizing Knowledge for Culturally-safe and Stigma Free Mental Health Care for Under-served Indigenous Communities in Ottawa-Gatineau
• Alcohol Consumption and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Synthesizing Knowledge for Policy Action
• The Relationship Between Social Connectedness and Mental Health for Residents of Long-term Care Homes: Knowledge Synthesis and Mobilization

Download

(External links)

Full PDF

Lay Summary PDF

Population

Vulnerable or At-Risk Populations, People Who Use Drugs (PWUD) and Substance Use

Language

To ensure the rapid dissemination of this critical information, information is published in the language in which it was submitted. Please contact us for French or English translations.