An Evaluation of Three Treatment Programmes for Alcoholism: an experimental study with 6‐and 18‐month follow‐ups

Summary The comparative effects of alcoholism treatment programmes were examined by randomly assigning 113 male and female detoxified alcoholics to either: a 6‐week inpatient programme, a 6‐week outpatient programme or a single confrontational interview. On a variety of outcome measures, that included both levels of drinking and general functioning taken 6 and 18 months after intake, no treatment appeared to be consistently more effective than another. Furthermore, those who stayed in treatment did not show significantly more long‐term improvement than those who refused or dropped out of treatment. Abstinent subjects felt more often than drinkers that they had achieved the goals they had set themselves and by the final follow‐up there were many positive differences in apparent lifestyle. Although individual drinking patterns were unstable, on average, almost half the subjects located had either abstained or were drinking moderately. Patient and treatment variables combined explained up to 57% of the variance in amount drunk after treatment, with patient variables providing the strongest associations.