Identifying Suitable Interventions and Developing Treatment Care Plans

Treatment is only one factor in promoting change in individuals but it can help patients change by teaching them to act and think differently about drinking. Sometimes the act of seeking help from a health professional can be an important first step for people to start changing their drinking patterns. 

The cumulative evidence from large-scale treatment trials, such as Project MATCH (Project MATCH Research Group 1993) and the United Kingdom Alcohol Treatment Trial (UKATT Research Team 2005) suggests that: 

• • • there is a range of effective interventions and treatment approaches for alcohol disorders 

    • no single intervention is effective for all people with alcohol problems 

    • there may be treatments that reduce the likelihood of finding large differential effects between empirically supported interventions. 

These treatment trials provide a framework for clinical responses to people with alcohol-related problems.