| Early
intervention and treatment of drug abuse can play an
important role in building safe and healthy communities by
reducing substance abuse and its negative consequences. Brief
interventions using goal-focused, client-centered counseling
have been shown to be effective for alcohol abuse, in addition
to being a cost-effective option for community-level treatment.
Brief interventions
are effective treatments
for alcohol, heroin
and cocaine abuse |
A recent analysis of multiple studies found that this type
of intervention, also known as motivational interviewing,
can reduce client drinking by up to 56 percent (Burke 2003).
The steps of motivational interviewing include establishing
rapport, asking permission to discuss drugs, exploring the
pros and cons of drug use, eliciting the gap between the patient’s
real and desired quality of life, assessing readiness to change
and, finally, developing an individual action plan based on
past successful behavior change strategies of the patient.
New research has expanded the potential of this intervention
beyond alcohol. A study by Dr. Judith Bernstein, Dr. Edward
Bernstein, and their colleagues from Boston University Schools
|
of Medicine and
Public Health, researched the impact of a single 20 minute,
one-on-one drug use cessation counseling session between peer
educators and 1,175 cocaine and heroin users.
Peer educators resembled the patients in three important
ways: they reflected the ethnic make-up of the targeted population;
they were non-physicians, and potentially less threatening;
and they were in recovery from cocaine and/or heroin use or
had grown up in a home with substance abuse.
The study suggests that brief interventions by peer educators
are an effective intervention for cocaine and heroin use.
The peer-counseled group was more likely to be abstinent than
the control group for cocaine alone (22.3% vs 16.9%), heroin
alone (40.2% vs 30.6%), and both drugs (17.4% vs 12.8%).
See: Bernstein, J., Bernstein, Tassiopoulos, K., Heeren,
T., Levenson, S., Hingson, R. (2005). Brief motivational intervention
at a clinic visit reduces cocaine and heroin use. Drug and
Alcohol Dependence, 7(1).
Burke, B.L., Arkowitz, H., Melchola, M. (2003). The efficacy
of motivational interviewing: A meta-analysis of controlled
clinical trials, J. Consult. Clin. Psychol., 71(5). |
