Creating Motivation for Change in Substance Abuse Treatment

This 15-hour course will help link research to practice by providing clear applications of motivational approaches in clinical practice and treatment programs. This course seeks to shift the conception of client motivation for change toward a view that empowers the treatment provider to elicit motivation. These approaches may be especially beneficial to particular populations (e.g., court-mandated offenders) with a low motivation for change.

Goals/Objectives

At the completion of this course participants will be able to: 

  • Understand how the concepts of motivation and change have evolved in recent years and describes the "stages-of-change" model, developed by Prochaska and DiClemente;
  • Identify interventions that can enhance clients' motivation, highlight their effective elements, and link them to the stages-of-change model;
  • Recognize aspects of motivational interviewing, developed by Miller and Rollnick, to interact with substance-using clients, helping them resolve issues related to their ambivalence;
  • Address the five stages of change and provide guidelines for clinicians to tailor their treatment to clients' stages of readiness for change;
  • Identify various tools and instruments used to measure components of change;
  • Identify methods for integrating motivational approaches into existing treatment programs;
  • Recognize directions for future research.


Your Course Instructor:
Richard L. Brown

MD, MPH

Richard L. Brown, MD, MPH, is a tenured Associate Professor in the
Department of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin Medical
School. His research, teaching, and publications reflect his long-standing interest in alcohol and drug abuse. He has served as a consultant to several managed care organizations providing assistance in the designof alcohol screening and intervention programs for managed health care systems. He is a past president of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (see www.amersa.org). He is now directing the HRSA-AMERSA Interdisciplinary Project to Improve Health Professional Education on Substance Abuse.

Dr. Brown also served on the Editorial Advisory Board for Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series 35, Enhancing Motivation for Change in Substance Abuse Treatment.