FACTORS INFLUENCING THE RECOVERY OF ALCOHOL ADDICTS

摘要

In this paper we describe investigations into how patient, and counsellor, characteristics appear to influence the degree (and speed) of recovery of alcohol addicts who are undergoing a program of therapeutic intervention. These results are particularly important for their applicability to clients undergoing therapeutic intervention in other regions, and countries, because they refer to a group of clients, and counsellors, who were not included in the previous investigations but who are following the same protocols. We show that if the patient/counsellor pairing possesses the worst attributable characteristics that this can reduce the recovery rate by up to two orders of magnitude. From the data available to us, as a by-product of the therapeutic intervention process, we show that, as before, not only does the comparative sex of the counsellor, and client, affect the recovery of the client but that comparative ethnicity also affects recovery, as do client sex, the counsellor, marital status, ethnicity, employment status, presenting type, location of abode and number of sessions attended. We show that ten of the variables, collected in these investigations, can be used in order to describe 80% of the variance of the time taken to reach Stage 9 (TT9). The variables number of sessions (SS9), relative client/counsellor sex (CCSEX) and employment (EMPL) can also be used to describe the same variance but with more degree of certainty in the description. We also show that the best recovery is observed for a single white male widower who is soley addicted to alcohol and claiming sickness benefit. This addict lives in one specific location and has a female, white, counsellor. However, the worst recovery is observed for a multiple addiction female, non-white, client who is divorced and claiming disabled benefit. This addict lives in anotherspecificlocation and has a female white counsellor. Furthermore these results confirm the results of the original investigations with regard to the variables which can be used to model addict recover behaviour.