Goal Management Training: A treatment for methamphetamine addiction

Addiction treatment through collaborative design.

  • Investigators

      • Professor Antonio Verdejo-Garcia
        • School of Psychological Sciences and the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University
    • Bronte Kerley

  • Co-investigators

  • Partner organisation

  • Funded by

    • MARC Interdisciplinary Research Seed Fund

  • Undertaken within

A sample page from the GMT+ workbook for program participants to use during and after their training.

A promising new evidence-based treatment for methamphetamine addiction is the result of a collaboration between Monash Design Health Collab and Monash’s Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health. The program, Goal Management Training + (GMT+) combines neuroscience insights with consumers’ input. This four-week, group-based, interactive training program is designed to be integrated into existing addiction treatment programs and has the potential to recover brain / thinking deficits that make quitting methamphetamine use so challenging.

Monash Design Health Collab partnered with Turner Institute researchers to co-create training module resources and activities to be used both in-session and between sessions of the GMT+ program. The researchers facilitated two workshops with people who have had lived experience with methamphetamine addiction. We were able to explore and test participants’ engagement with interactive training activities and discover ways to make the program more accessible and relevant to the target group. Through a collaborative design process, we used visual design strategies and creative workshop activities to produce in-session and between session training resources specifically designed to encourage participation and sustained attention, enhancing the potential for people recovering from addiction to learn key cognitive skills and enact behaviour change.

After the program has been trialed with participants, other clinical applications are being considered to help evaluate GMT+’s efficacy in real-world settings, such as drug and alcohol treatment services.