Published Paper Details:

Background: Smartphone addiction (SA) refers to spending long hours using a smartphone, thus neglecting many other activities that an individual must complete. Adverse effects of SA include wasting time, neglecting other activities and people, and lethargy. SA in general refers to individuals' overuse of a smartphone and their inability to control its usage and preoccupation with it. Usage becomes compulsory, which results in adverse effects on various aspects of one's life: health, physical, psychological, social, and familial. 1 Long-term use of smartphones can cause physical, mental and behavioral problems such as eye problems, unhealthy eating habits, decrease in academic performance, decrease in attention and concentration, communication and adaptation problems, development of addictive behavior, low self-esteem and suicidal tendencies 2 Problematic smartphone uses and or addiction is defined as a form of behaviour characterized by the compulsive use of a smartphone that results in various forms of physical, psychological, or social harm. 3 Objective: 1. to know the efficacy of homoeopathic medicines in the cases of addiction of smartphone by using SAS-SV pre and post assessment test. 2. To identify the commonest indicated homoeopathic medicine in cases of addiction of smartphone. Method: The case series study includes 45 diagnosed cases of smartphone addiction using SAS-SV Scale; medicine was prescribed on the basis of totality of symptoms. Result: In our study, by using SAS-SV scale we assessed the pre and post scores of the patient by which we calculated the t- value using paired t-test and as our calculated value of t (10.8) was greater than the critical t value (2.02) at 5% level of significance. Hence, our study hypothesis was accepted. Conclusion: According to our study, indicated Homoeopathic medicines showed significant improvement in symptoms related to Smartphone addiction in 95.5% of population; but none of them were completely de-addicted according to SAS-SV scale scoring criteria in individuals between 15-30 years of age when prescribed on the basis of totality of symptoms. This shows that overall response of Homoeopathic medicines for Smartphone addiction were encouraging with evidence of improvement in symptoms of Smartphone addiction, which varied from patient to patient.