Ch. 3: Motivation and Readiness to Change

This chapter introduces important concepts related to motivation and readiness to change. These concepts form the basis for several contemporary approaches with a strong evidence base for their effectiveness in helping people make healthful changes in behaviors, changes such as reducing or stopping their use of substances. This is important in terms of:

• preventing substance use or misuse from becoming a substance use disorder,
• motivating a person to enter into treatment for a substance-related problem, and
• engaging a person in the change process
• relapse prevention.

This content in this chapter stands in sharp contrast to the highly confrontational Intervention approach that you learned about in Module 6 which encourages family members and professionals to be directive, delivering advice and information from a position of authority, and even punitive or coercive (Holleran Steiker, 2016).

You are reading Velasquez, M.M., Crouch, C., Stephens, N.S., & DiClemente, C.C. (2016). Group treatment for substance abuse: A stages-of-change therapy manual, second edition, (pp. 9-36). NY: Guilford Press. In this chapter you will read about:

• the transtheoretical model (TTM) and stages of change in how people make behavioral changes
• matching the right processes with change process stages
• motivational interviewing, ambivalence, and resistance
• an overview of treatment strategies
• key terms used in discussing intervening around substance misuse and substance use disorders