The effects of personal feedback on alcohol intake in dually diagnosed clients: An empirical study of William R. Miller's motivational enhancement therapy

The psychological literature reveals the frequent coexistence of severe mental illness and substance abuse problems. No existing substance abuse treatment has demonstrated efficacy with all subgroups of the heterogeneous population of substance abusers. There are few empirical studies to identify effective alcohol abuse treatments for people who have both alcohol abuse problems and severe mental disorders. The psychological literature indicates that traditional alcohol treatment programs are not well suited to mentally ill alcohol abusers. Miller's Motivational Enhancement Therapy differs from traditional alcohol treatments in using methods which are similar to methods recommended as effective strategies for providing treatment to mentally ill adults. The current study specifically investigates the effects of Miller's personalized assessment feedback in treating alcohol abuse with mentally ill adults. A pretest-posttest experimental design was used to study the effects of Miller's personal feedback treatment on mentally ill chemical abusers. Thirty adult clients of a community mental health center's program for adults with severe mental illness were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. A brief one-time treatment intervention presented assessment feedback derived from the Alcohol Use Inventory ( AUI) (Horn, Wanberg, & Foster, 1987; Wanberg, Horn, & Foster, 1990), the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory ( SASSI) (Miller, G., 1985), and the Symptom Check List-90-R (SCL-90-R) (Deorgatis, 1983). Results on AUI and SCL-90-R also comprised the pretest and posttest for both groups, with the Volume scale on the AUI defining the dependent variable. Data was analyzed with a one-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Other variables from the AUI and SCL-90-R were assessed for exploratory purposes. With covariate control for pretest results, mentally ill adults who received Millers personal assessment feedback had lower volume of alcohol consumption than did the control group. This result indicates that Millers assessment feedback was an effective treatment for the subject population. Future studies should further isolate effective treatment factors by focusing on within group differences obvious at the pretest stage of the current experiment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)