'Nonjudgmental' Alcohol Interventions on College Campuses January 21, 2005
News Summary
Schools like Fairfield University in Connecticut have turned to "motivational interviewing" based interventions to dissuade students from drinking excessively -- but without employing a heavy dose of guilt, the New York Times reported Jan. 16.Alcohol-policy violators at Fairfield are placed on probation, evaluated by an addiction counselor, and enrolled in an eight-session program aimed at preventing binge drinking. Attendance is mandatory, but quitting drinking is not. Counselors, through the motivational-interviewing process, instead seek to get students to examine their own behavior and the impact of heavy drinking on their daily lives and life goals. The idea that excessive drinking is an aberration, not the norm, also is stressed.
"It's not anti-drinking; it's anti-harmful drinking," said G. Alan Marlatt, who uses motivational interviewing at the University of Washington intervention program he created and runs. E-CHUG, an online self-assessment program used by 100 colleges to alter abusive student drinking patterns, also is based on the motivational-interviewing approach.
"When you sit with a person and ask them what the trouble is with their drinking, they've got a whole list of problems," says William R. Miller, a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico who developed the technique. Miller said college students would likely balk at being called alcoholics, but seem receptive to advice on modifying their behavior.
Tracked three months after completing the program, Fairfield students nearly all said they had cut back on their drinking. In 2003-04, 25 percent of participants said they were drinking considerably less, while 69 percent said they were drinking somewhat less.
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