Motivational interviewing: Hype or hope?

Lifestyle behavior not only plays a big part in the incidence of heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory conditions and diabetes, but also affects the outcomes of chronic illnesses. Motivational interviewing aims to help increase patients’ motivation to change, and enhance behavioral change. I must admit, I welcomed the hype with some skepticism. Why? My experience is that failure to achieve positive change in patients may not be the result of not having the counseling methods to do so, but rather of practitioners’ non-adoption, partial implementation (low completeness and low fidelity) and/or failure to maintain acquired counseling skillfulness to change patients’ motivation and behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)