THE PRESSURES TO CHANGE APPROACH TO WORKING WITH THE PARTNERS OF HEAVY DRINKERS

The 'Pressures to Change' approach to working with the partners of dri nkers is a structured procedure for promoting change in resistant drin kers. In this study 22 women and one man were randomly allocated to tw o treatment conditions and one no-treatment waiting fist control condi tion in an experimental evaluation of the procedure. Group I was treat ed individually and Group 2 was treated as a group. Almost two-thirds of the drinking partners of clients in treatment made a significant mo ve towards change, compared with none of the drinkers in the waiting l ist control condition.