Our purpose is to specify personal, treatment-related, and life context influences that facilitate or inhibit alcohol abuse and the outcome of alcoholism treatment. The underlying rationale is that an adequate understanding of the functioning of persons with drinking problems will be enhanced by (1) measurement procedures that allow for the systematic assessment of the community contexts in which persons function and (2) conceptual frameworks that encompass the interrelationships among sociodemographic characteristics, treatment factors, life stressors and resources, personal resources and coping responses, and their relationship to individual functioning (drinking behavior, depression). The work is divided into three phases. In the first phase we will complete the development of a Life Stressors and Resources Inventory, as well as a Coping Inventory. Phase II will complete and integrate our research on the course of residential treatment for alcoholism. More specifically, we will analyze data from a 10-year follow-up of persons who were participants in our earlier study of residential treatment for alcoholism. In addition, long-term follow-up data from sociodemographically matched community controls and their spouses will be used to guage the degree to which patients who are recovering, in terms of their drinking behavior, are functioning as well as their neighbors in other areas. We also will complete a monograph reporting the results of our study of treated individuals and their families. Phase III will complete the study of treated and untreated alcohol abusers drawn from alcoholism information/referral centers and detoxification programs. The proposed work will finish ongoing 6- and 12-month follow-ups and provide a 30-month follow-up, thereby enabling us to track the course of treated and untreated alcohol abuse over a longer period. This intensive, multiwave study will probe the process of treatment entry, as well as the process and effects of treatment. It also will explore the dual process of recovery and relapse among both men and women who abuse alcohol but who do not undergo formal treatment. By learning more about the natural forces that trigger and maintain abusive drinking or curtail it, we expect our findings to be rich with implications for treatment - particularly interventions aimed toward patients' normal life situations.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 65 publications
