Understanding Treatment Readiness in Substance Abusers
The goal of this study was to more fully understand readiness for treatment in a pre-treatment sample of 446 substance abusers.
Researchers used Structural Equation Modeling to:
- examine the relationships between readiness factors identified in the Pre-Treatment Readiness Scale; and
- identify the effects of predisposing, illness, and inhibiting determinants on the factors.
As with any condition ‘problem recognition’ was found to influence readiness to change. One needs to understand the scale of a problem before it is ‘accepted’ as needing action.
Problem recognition was associated with ‘desire for change’ not necessarily ‘desire for help’. In other words recognizing a problem does not necessarily mean one will change or seek help. The problem is only accepted at this stage. Thus, ‘treatment reluctance’ was also associated with desire for change in the study.
Fixed characteristics such as age and gender had minimal influences on readiness factors, as did inhibiting characteristics that reflected recent functioning.
Illness characteristics including drug severity and perceived treatment barriers had a more robust influence on readiness factors.
When problem recognition, desire for change, treatment and help seeking reluctance (denial), awareness of drug use and illness severity are combined substance abusers are in a catch-22 situation. They want to change, they see the problem(s), but are fearful of asking for and seeking help.
Brief-TSF is designed to overcome these barriers. By using a tested structured process alcoholics and addicts are coaxed through their fears and inhibitions to seek help in an effective manner.
This article is based on the research report of; Richard C. Rapp, Jiangmin Xu, Carey A. Carr, D. Timothy Lane, Cristina Redko, Jichuan Wang, Robert G Carlson. Understanding Treatment Readiness in Recently Assessed, Pre-Treatment Substance Abusers. Journal of The Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse. Volume: 28 Issue: 1
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