Brief intervention for heavy-drinking college students: 4-year follow-up and natural history

Objectives. This study examined long-term response to an individual prevent ive intervention for highrisk college drinkers relative to the natural hist ory of college drinking. Methods. A single-session, individualized preventive intervention was evalu ated within a randomized controlled trial with college freshmen who reporte d drinking heavily while in high school. An additional group randomly selec ted from the entire screening pool provided a normative comparison. Partici pant self-report was assessed annually for 4 years. Results. High-risk controls showed secular trends for reduced drinking quan tity and negative consequences without changes in drinking frequency. Those receiving the brief preventive intervention reported significant additiona l reductions, particularly with respect to negative consequences. Categoric al individual change analyses show that remission is normative, and they su ggest that participants receiving the brief intervention are more likely to improve and less likely to worsen regarding negative drinking consequences . Conclusions. Brief individual preventive interventions for high-risk colleg e drinkers can achieve longterm benefits even in the context of maturationa l trends.