Maintenance

(from the chapter) Because patients can present at both low and high levels of motivation for making changes in behavior, it is important for clinicians to be able to recognize a patient's level of readiness in order to provide the most appropriate response and treatment. In this chapter, I discuss Prochaska and DiClemente's maintenance stage of change, in which the patient has accomplished the desired change and now seeks to sustain the change for the long term (Prochaska and DiClemente 1984), as well as its ties to Miller and Rollnick's Motivational Interviewing (Miller and Rollnick 2002). Patients may enter this phase with confidence in having achieved their goal but may find themselves surprisingly challenged or even struggling to maintain the change for which they have worked so hard. This is where the clinicians support of the patient's motivation is vital to continued success and stability in behavior change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter)