A consumer’s eye view of family-involved alcohol treatment

ABSTRACT

Family involvement leads to better outcomes of alcohol treatment, but empirically-supported family treatments have not been adopted widely. The current study obtained consumer perspectives to inform development of a family treatment designed to be adopted by community programs. Four focus groups (N=25; 6 patients, 4 family members, 15 clinicians) were analyzed based on a coding system developed using Grounded Theory. Patient alcohol use negatively impacted family interactions, relationships, and resources. Family involvement barriers included: pragmatic challenges, institutional barriers, and family/patient ambivalence. Strategies to increase family involvement included: enhancing positive interactions, maintaining optimism about family involvement, and clinicians recommending family involvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Alcohol
• treatment
• barriers
• family
• focus group
• qualitative

Acknowledgments

The authors express their appreciation to the individuals who participated in this study.

Conflict of interest

All authors approved the manuscript and this submission. The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grant R34AA023304 to the first author, and support from T32AA018108 to the second, fifth, and sixth authors. Brandi C. Fink is supported by the National Center for Research Resources and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, Grant Number UL1 TR001449, and Grant Number KL2 TR001448.