MI (Motivation Interviewing) is a therapeutic approach that medical practitioners exercise for intensifying individuals’ intentions and motivation to achieve specific goals. It’s a commonly utilized technique in aiding people with escaping Substance Use Disorder (SUD). Unfortunately, in many instances, addicted people develop their addiction for evading traumas or other issues. Hence, a lack of commitment or mislaying the required motivation is also commonplace and the most intricate hurdle to defeat addiction.
SUD patients are prone to continue with their compulsion of taking substances despite being informed about corresponding consequences like financial drainage, potential health issues, and other legal and social outcomes. Many of them cannot even think about life beyond their addiction and live with a pessimistic mindset. As they are even unable to disembark on the decision of leaving their Substance Use Disorder, possessing enough motivation remains out of the question. But, psychological treatments in the UK incorporate Motivational Interviewing to assist patients in identifying their mental blockages, uncertainties, and apprehensions. They encourage patients’ aspirations of leaving their addiction and initiate the voyage of recovery from SUD.
Objectives of Motivational Interviewing
Rehab healthcare facilities maintain seven definite aspects in their Motivational Interviewing approach irrespective of the employed variations. Those facets are mentioned in the subsequent section.
- Outside sources shouldn’t generate motivations in patients but from only within them.
- The counselor will not be accountable for managing the vacillations of SUD patients. The clients would be meticulously liable to resolve it.
- Any persuasion cannot be a part of vacillations diminishing endeavors.
- The counselor should acquire necessary information from the client tactfully and quietly.
- The counselor will guide the patients to identify and eliminate ambivalence.
- The consultant must act as a patient’s companion while motivational interviewing him.
- The willingness to change should never be considered a characteristic, as it’s the outcome of the interpersonal interactions between the counselor and the patient.
4 Steps of Motivational Interviewing
Any rehab clinic in the UK containing adequate experience in aiding patients with Motivational Interviewing can complete the entire process within a minimal number of sessions. But the procedure of advancement with it should be adhering to the following steps.
- Engaging: Accomplishing a true companionship with the client by discussing his disquiets, issues, and anticipations.
- Focusing: Gradually narrowing the conversation down to the subject regarding the habit and patterns the patient is keen to eliminate.
- Evoking: Encouraging the client’s keenness for the change by informing him about its significance and benefits. It includes generating the confidence required for the transformation and steadily navigating him to the state of readiness.
- Planning: Planning and creating some practical and target-oriented steps the client needs to exercise while executing the changes.
According to the experts, this process effectively accompanies patients without making them defensive and resistant. Hence, through it, they can have the ability to consider how to make changes and proceed towards the desired direction.
Why is Motivational Interviewing Effectual?
When being used on patients with Substance Use Disorder, the main motive of Motivational Interviewing remains to empower the inner willingness of leaving the addiction of substance against the tendency of continuing such habits. Substance addiction with an open mind, it’s impossible to find any legit reason for the patient to continue with their practices. But a possessed mind eventually stumbles on one or more reasons to do so. Often, addicts start taking addictives even though they left it quite some time ago.
Counselors at a rehab clinic in the UK chart out the benefits and disadvantages of quitting the dependence on the patients, leaving them to decide the option they feel suitable for their future. After the patients choose, reviewing the pros and cons of changes and what they would feel like, the conversion becomes undemanding. The remorseful feeling of leaving something they love doesn’t generate within them. Instead, they thrive on causing the transformations they have decided themselves for a more productive and contented life.
After encountering the success rate of MI, medical practitioners are now exploiting it in addressing patients with behavioral and mental issues. Hence, eating disorders, gambling addiction, low self-esteem, and internet addiction treatment measures often involve Motivational interviewing nowadays.
Benefits of Motivational Interviewing in Treating SUD
Motivational Interviewing has become an inseparable part of psychological treatments in the UK for treating Substance Use Disorder Patients because of the galore of benefits. MI effectively supports the enhancement of treatment program retention and participation rates. Besides, it also plays a pivotal role in generating successful treatment outcomes aside from increasing the abstinence rates of the post-program period. Clients can start deriving the benefits from the initial sessions as well. In addition, it contains the ability to trigger changes in a patient’s behavior by utilizing his resources.