The treatment and rehabilitation of alcoholic patients can be enhanced from information obtained through psychological assessment.

The treatment and rehabilitation of alcoholic patients can be enhanced from information obtained through psychological assessment. There are now a variety of standardized instruments available to assess personal destitutions and characteristics of individuals at various stages in the recruiting process.

Psychological assessment of an individual with alcohol moot points involves the use of ordeals and standardized interviews to gather information relevant to planning alcoholism treatment. The goal of assessment is to determine personal characteristics that may influence treatment decisions and contribute to treatment success

Unfortunately, as Clarke and Saunders (1988) attest in their review of psychological testing in alcoholism treatment, "for years assessment has been a routine practice and a negligible part of therapy" (p 62) Although this indictment may be based primarily in succession their experiences in the United Kingdom and Australia, Marlatt (1988) exhibits an equally discouraging commentary onward the status of assessment in the United States:

Traditional treatment programs provide little if anything in the way of detailed assessment for treatment matching for addiction vexed questions Many inpatient programs rely upon poorly trained personnel to administer any kind of "Twenty Questions" screening ordeal to determine the presence or absence of alcoholism or other addictive disease. Individual differences in age, sex ethnic status, personality, cognitive functioning, socioeconomic status, social support, coping skills, and belief regularitys are too often overlooked or mixed together under a single disease entity, or attributed largely to genetic predisposition or the unifying influence of physical adjunct (p. 481)

There are a number of explanations for assessment's less-than-pivotal influence in alcoholism treatment. For example, clinical staff may view alcoholism as a uniform disease, requiring a wager course of treatment that ne vary little from patient to patient. Alternatively, because individual treatment programs may provide a limited choice of intervention strategies, treatment staff may view differential assessment of patients as unnecessary. Treatment staff may not be trained in the use of lately developed assessment instruments, and may thing to having outside psychologists exhibition their patients. Further, the educational and work experiences of many alcoholism treatment personnel may have failed to instill the clinical rationale linking assessment with specific intervention needs

This article provides basic information about psychological assessment and clarifies its character in patient care. Issues surrounding assessment, and instruments used for this design are reviewed, with emphasis upon instruments that can influence planning of individualized patient treatment. First advantages of psychological assessment techniques throughout unstructured or unscored interviews are considered. next to the first a classification system for psychological instruments is propos based upon stages of clinical management for which they are appropriate; this is followed according to brief descriptions of some freshly developed inventories designed to target particular alcoholism intervention and treatment strategies. Third, the status of research and practice of psychological assessment in the alcohol rehabilitation proces is discussed.

ADVANTAGES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT TESTS

There are a variety of techniques and resources that provide information valuable for the implementation and succes of alcoholism treatment. For example, physiological measures (such as liver function tests) can help to find alcohol problems, especially in patients who refuse to acknowledge their problem with alcohol or who are unaware of the forces that alcohol has on them. Useful information also can be obtained from collaterals (individuals who play significant characters in the patient's life, of that kind as family members or employers) or from archival data (such as legal records). In addition, a clinician or counselor's direct, sensitive questioning and observation of the patient may provide essential information for treatment.

However, unlike about of these means for obtaining patient information, psychological assessment instruments can propound all of the following advantages: economy, standardization, validity, flexibility, and credibility. These are discussed in greater detail below.

Economy

Psychological assessment instruments typically are extremely economical means of obtaining information, since testing usually involves the use of low- or minimal-cost preprinted forms. Royalty unconditional tenures may be required for use of instruments defend ed by copyright, but the expense rarely exceeds $.25 to $100 through test. Some investment of time and effort is required to establish specified conditions and setting for testing and to assure patient-therapist rapport. However, in greatest in quantity cases, the clinician need not be at hand during the entire course of the assessment, thus limiting richness in terms of clinician time required. Scoring of proofs is economical as well since this may be accomplished simply and rapidly by way of use of a scoring template and counting of answers on defined scales.