Telepsychiatry for Social Isolation in Youths

CBT is a psychotherapeutic intervention that focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (such as thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and their associated behaviours to improve emotional regulation and develop personal coping strategies that target solving current problems. In this study, patients with SI will undergo 8 sessions of CBT (45 min, once a week), remotely. Techniques and strategies of the intervention will be based on a short telepsychotherapy protocol previously published by our group (Biagianti et. al., 2021). Instead, the content of each session will be adapted to the psychopathology associated with social isolation and the age of the subject. The psychotherapeutic sessions of the patients will be audio-recorded in order to conduct retrospective analyzes of the patient's speech.

The cognitive training will consist of 10 hours (30 minutes/session) of computer-based exercises focusing on working memory, attention, executive functions and social cognition, which will be performed online using BrainHQ software. This software allows for the customization of the training based on the specific characteristics of each subject. For example, it allows automatic adjustment of the difficulty of the exercises, trial by trial and session by session, in order to guarantee an adequate level of attention and motivation for the entire duration of the training and therefore favor optimal learning rates.