Four out of every five college students drink alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Additionally, about half of these young drinkers consume alcohol through binge drinking.
Released in 2013, an NSU student and faculty-created app called iSelfChange is available for Apple smart devices to help both college students and adult drinkers manage their consumption and achieve goals in reducing dangerous drinking habits.
Binge drinking, a form of heavy drinking, is done with the primary intention of becoming intoxicated in a very short period of time. According to the Centers for Disease Control, binge drinking occurs when men have five or more and women have four or more drinks in two hours. But oftentimes, students partake in this unhealthy activity without realizing that they might have a serious problem and do not feel the need to seek professional help.
Graduate psychology student Samantha Domingo proposed the idea of “filling the gap” to access these students who weren’t coming to the clinic during her second year at the Center for Psychological Studies. She was a psychology trainee at the Healthy Lifestyles Guided Self Change Clinic, under the guidance of Linda and Mark Sobell, NSU psychology professors and directors of the clinic. At this outpatient community-based clinic, members of the South Florida community are provided with affordable psychological services.
“One day, it occurred to me that many of the tools we use in our clinic to help our clients could be translated into an app,” Domingo said. “There is a high percentage of young adults who don’t seek treatment for alcohol use problems due to stigma, lack of access to treatment, or simply beliefs about their problems not being severe enough.”
Linda Sobell was supportive of the initial idea, but both she and Domingo were perplexed as to how to build an app from scratch.
“But if you know anything about her, you’ll know that everything is possible, especially when it comes to helping advance our field through scientific methods,” Domingo said.
Sobell applied for a President’s Faculty Grant, and when she received the award, others began recognizing the complexity of the project and their team grew. Consultants, specialists, other graduate psychology students, including Darius Fathi, participated in the app’s development. The team was able to secure a contractor who designed the app at a low cost, and, after about two years, they had a final product with results from a study to assess the app’s effectiveness.
“Building an app is very time-consuming and very, very, expensive, but we were all very motivated to work hard and have a product as an end result that would help our community, which could have important implications for public health,” Domingo said.
The app allows user to track and monitor their drinking patterns and levels and provides practical tips for reducing alcohol consumption and facts and statistics about alcohol and health.
Sobell, who has received many awards in the fields of psychology and research at NSU, said the app is one her biggest accomplishments to date.
“Most students with drinking problems don’t come in for treatment because they’re either too embarrassed or they don’t want to be stigmatized or labeled as an alcoholic,” Sobell said. “But with this app, they have treatment and intervention 24/7, and it’s totally confidential and private.”
The app is currently rated 4.5 stars in the Apple iTunes store, with one online reviewer saying, “Great app for changing your drinking patterns on your own terms. The app has very useful, simple and effective tools to help you change your alcohol use. Highly recommend!”
There are other apps on the market targeting users who want to change their drinking habits, but the iSelfChange app is the first to test the service’s efficacy, and Domingo said there are even more expansions and updates to come. She and Sobell hope to create an Android version of the app and also make it available in other languages, including Spanish, to cater to the South Florida community.
“We are all eager to continue expanding our work on this project and have the availability of the app be more widely known not just within academia, but especially within the public domain,” Domingo said.
The iSelfChange App can be downloaded for free from the Apple iTunes store, and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch devices.
