In a study called Project CHOICES, University of Virginia Health System researchers found that a few nonjudgemental, nonconfrontational counseling sessions had a significant impact on women at high risk for binge drinking, unplanned pregnancy, and exposure to alcohol during pregnancy. The study of 830 women in three states was designed to reduce the risk of alcohol-exposed pregnancy before conception.

Karen Ingersoll, Ph.D. and her team of researchers found that after only four counseling sessions binge-drinking women were twice as likely to move from the at risk for alcohol-exposed pregnancy to the low risk category.

Women Were Not Seeking Help

"We demonstrated that using motivational counseling can have a major impact, even on behaviors that are considered difficult to change, such as binge drinking," Ingersoll said in a news release. "While our main goal was to reduce the risk of alcohol-exposed pregnancy, ours was the first multi-site study to show that motivational counseling can be effective when targeting more than one health behavior, in this case, both drinking and contraception habits, among women who were not seeking help to change."

According to Dr. Ingersoll, "the trained counselors used motivational interviewing to express empathy with the individuals who come for counseling, manage resistance without confrontation, and support the self-confidence of the individual. They used counseling techniques such as open-ended questioning, reflective listening, summarizing, and affirming."

Effective Counseling Outcomes

Although the study targeted both behaviors (binge drinking and poor contraception use) associated with alcohol-exposed pregnancy, counselors emphasize the target behavior favored by the participant.

Ingersoll has a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how this effective counseling technique works.

"Our hope is to identify which aspects of this effective counseling style are most important and linked to the positive outcomes, so that we can create even more effective therapies to help people make healthy changes in problematic habits," she said.

Source: Ingersoll's findings were published in the American Journal of the Preventive Medicine.

More Information:

• Interviewing Technique Reduces Risk for Binge Drinking
  
• Pregnancy and Drinking
  
• About Contraception

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