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SOLITAIRE

Digital interventions for Social isOLation In youThs And theIR familiEs

Introduction to the pilot

Context

Social Isolation is associated with severe psychiatric disorders including Hikikomori syndrome, anxiety disorders, depression, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), mood dysregulation and autism spectrum (ASD) disorders.

Problem

If untreated, Social Isolation can lead to withdrawal from society and the development of cognitive and physical disorders.Traditional interventions often fail to reach isolated patients, as face-to-face approaches represent a burden for withdrawn patients.

Solution

SOLITAIRE is a multimodal telepsychiatry intervention on young patients with SI, combining cognitive remediation (CR), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and psychoeducation to family members (PE).

Objective

SOLITAIRE will be delivered entirely remotely, thus overcoming many of the limits of the standard clinical approaches.

Objectives

1000
Italian teenager
in isolation
10000
Italian teenager
at risk of isolation

Timeline

Kick-Off
Expanded
The SOLITAIRE project starts

Following the approval of the involved ethics committees, required and obtained prior to the project start, the multidisciplinary team meets to define the project schedule and specific objectives. The team starts analyzing the problem and the possible solutions in detail.

Enrollment phase
September 2023 – August 2024

Patients with SI will be enrolled at two clinical sites. Overall, the enrollment phase will last 12 months. For each patients enrolled, the SOLITAIRE approach will be adopted

Baseline T0 tests
October 2023 – September 2024

As soon as individual patients enter the pilot the baseline (T0) assessment including the clinical and cognitive evaluation and blood sampling will be performed. The T0 for each patient is related to the exact date of enrollment. The Baseline phase is linked to the enrollment phase and lasts 12 months.

Intervention
November 2023 – October 2024

The duration of the intervention is of 8 weeks and the start date of the individual intervention is related to the time of enrollments. Collectively, the intervention phase will last 12 months.

Follow Up (T1) assessment
January/February 2024 – January 2025

Following the end of the first 8-weeks intervention, the follow-up phase (T1) will start with an assessment of the intervention including clinical and cognitive evaluation and blood sampling. Overall duration of the follow-up phase is 12 months. The end of the follow-up phase is expected at the beginning of 2025 and will mark the end of the SOLITAIRE intervention. A preliminary and descriptive analysis will be provided at the end of this phase.

Overall statistical analysis and
publication of results
January 2025 – June 2025

By the end of the study, SOLITAIRE will provide results on feasibility/efficacy of SOLITAIRE. We will contrast clinical and social- cognitive data among groups and longitudinally, and we will build an automatic system for the assessment of depression associated with SI using patients' speech.

System components

Clinical interviews and psychotherapeutic interventions (CBT, CR and PE) will be carried out through the Home Hospital Care System (Cure Ospedaliere Domiciliari, COD20), a telemedicine platform owned by the University of Milan that will provide a patient-specialist video consultation service.

Team

Roberto Sassi

Pilot leader
Dept. of Computer Science

Paolo Brambilla

Dept. of Pathophysiology and Transplantation

Stavros Ntalampiras

Dept. of Computer Science

Publications