Does enhanced social support improve outcomes for problem drinkers in guided self-change treatment?☆
Section snippets
Participants
Individuals voluntarily seeking outpatient treatment for alcohol problems (Toronto, Canada), were informed about the study and, if agreeable, were screened for eligibility. Guided self-change is a brief, cognitive-behavioral motivational intervention presented to clients as a treatment to help them help themselves (Sobell & Sobell, 1993a). Clients are helped to evaluate their drinking and to develop and implement their own plans to resolve their problem.
Clients were recruited to the program
Results
The primary evaluation for this study involved a multivariate analysis of variance that entered condition (DS, NS) and time (pretreatment, within-treatment, posttreatment) as independent variables and five timeline followback drinking variables as dependent variables (proportion of all days abstinent, proportion of days drinking 1–4 standard drinks (13.6 g absolute ethanol=1 standard drink), proportion of days drinking 5–9 standard drinks, proportion of days consumed ⩾10 standard drinks, and
Discussion
The overall findings of this study are consistent with other studies finding guided self-change treatment to be associated with substantial improvements in drinking for problem drinkers (Sobell & Sobell, 1998). For example, an overall reduction in drinking of 53.8% was found in a previous study, compared to 48.5% in the present study. An interesting feature of the present results that parallels past guided self-change studies (Sobell, M. B., et al., 1995) is that the changes in drinking
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Manuscript published under editorship of former editor L. Reyna.